This cupboard is a street find, it was covered in brown paint. Ben sanded it back to timber or almost. We love it! It had a child drawing on the inside of the doors, we kept the drawing.
It is the year for replenishing the jam cupboard. There aren’t too many pots left. I did not do any jam last year, would you believe it?
I reassure you I did not cook any jam today. It has been awfully hot today. The breeze has just arrived and hopefully we will lose a few degrees overnight.
I usually make jams when fruits are in full season and their price has gone down sufficiently. I make:
strawberry jam
apricot jam
red current jam
raspberry jam
apple jelly
There are some odd batches as well, such as rhubarb or banana mango. The latest one is delicious but doesn’t keep very long. The mother of a close friend introduced me and my girlfriends to it years ago, during a trip to French Guyana. We must have significantly helped emptying her freezer of it over a couple of weeks!
Replenishing the jam cupboard
As I was looking through the jam cupboard for this post, I realised there are a few unlabeled jars, some I am not sure what it may be. One of the unlabeled jar looks like milk jam (homemade dulce de leche).
Apricot and rosemary jam
This week I made apricot and rosemary jam. The idea of adding a couple of sprigs of rosemary came a bit from nowhere. Maybe having a few sprigs of rosemary extra lying around inspired me (they use rosemary as ornamental bushes in the nearby township! 🙂 ).
I made a first small batch, loved it, specially on fresh bread with cream cheese. By now, I have made a bigger batch, enough for a while. Check out the apricot and rosemary jam recipe HERE.
This apricot and rosemary jam is a slight twist from the plain apricot jam. The best time to do it is in summer at the peak of the apricot season. If you can – I know this is not always the case – get them quite ripe as they then have more flavour.
This recipe makes six to eight jars of jam. The final number will depend of the volumes of your jars. I imagine you may be reusing any jars that come through the pantry!
Ingredients:
2.5 kilos of apricots (aim at 2 kg of fruits once the stone is removed, you will likely have a few extras)
1.8 g of white sugar
2 long sprigs of rosemary
1/2 cup of water
6-8 jars sterilised (you can do that when the jam is cooking)
Method:
Open the apricots (just with your fingers, no need for a knife), remove the stone and the remaining of the stem.
Place all the ingredients in a large pot (twice the volume of your ingredients), heat up slowly. Once it is boiling, reduce to a very slow boil and allow to boil for 30 to 45 minutes until the fruits are cooked and start to break apart.
Here you can choose to have big chunks of fruits and parts of jam without pieces or smaller chunks. For that use a soup stick blender and blend in short burst making sure you leave some apricots pieces in the mix!
The jam would have started to thicken (would coat the back of a wooden spoon and a few drops placed on a cold plate will not be runny). Remove the sprigs of rosemary. If the leaves are still attached to the sprigs, peel them off and leave them in the jam.
Stop the cooking and immediately transfer into the jam jars using a ladle and funnel with a large nozzle. Fill to a half a centimetre from the top.
Close with the lids and clean the sides of the jars if necessary. Allow to cool before labelling and storing away.
The jam does not need to be kept in the fridge. Opened jars can be kept in the pantry or the fridge, it is a matter of personnal preferences and time you take to go through the jar. If you need a couple month per jar, I would recommend storing in the fridge.
Who does not love raspberry jam? When I grew up, we would have to pick the raspberries, here I save myself that trouble and head to the frozen section at the shop. Some shops or food suppliers will have them at a better price than the main supermarkets.
Jam traditionally call for 1/2 fruit to 1/2 sugar weight in their composition. I prefer mine not so sweet. Also note that this recipe does not use any jam settler, if you want to use those, I would suggest the “sugar jam” which is sugar and settler all in one. In that case do not use lemon juice, apparently it cancel the effect of the settler.
Did you notice my jam label? I have now been using it for 7-8 years!
Ingredients:
1 kg frozen berries
700 g of white sugar
the juice of 2 lemons
Material:
Jam jars previously cleaned, then sterilised in boiling water (I do that while my jam is cooking) and let to cool down face down on a clean towel
a large ended funnel and a ladle
A large cooking pot
Method:
Put the raspberries, lemon juice and sugar in the cooking pot on the stove. Stir roughly. I like using a large wooden spoon to do that.
When the fruits are boiling reduce a bit. In the meanwhile place a small plate in the freezer and prepare your jars.
The jam is ready to put in pots when a few drops of jam placed on your cold plate (yep, the one you put in the freezer) and allowed to cool down for up to a minute does not run when held at an angle.
Using the ladle and the large ended funnel fill the pots one by one quite close to the top and immediately put on the lids. The jam will settle, it may take overnight.
When the pots are cold, clean them if there is a bit of jam on the outside and label them.
Tip: be very careful not to burn yourself with the jam, hot jam burns and it is painful!
e the stone is removed, you will likely have a few extras)
