I seem to have become completely obsessed with preserving at the moment!
Which, I guess, is a good thing to get out of my system now while things are still in season and relatively easy (and more importantly cheap) to get hold of...
So off I went to my sis' yesterday for another jam making session.
My sister was not in the best of spirits, as she'd had a tooth pulled that day, but soon cheered up as we started planning and looking at recipes.
We decided to make two small batches of things we hadn't tried before, pick the one we liked best and make a huge batch of it for the christmas gift baskets we're planning.
The problem has been that we've liked the jams we've made so far too much to give them away!
After perusing some discussion we settled on fig jam and peach jam.
The fig jam is pretty straight forward and we used a recipe from blagger.co.uk which everyone should read regardless of your interest in fig jam recipes!
Now the peach jam was another story...
I'd found a recipe on another blog called saving the season for making earl grey peach jam which I thought sounded fabulous!
My sister on the other hand was doubtful...
After I managed to convince her we realised she didn't have any earl grey tea, she did however have some Lady grey which she figured would be a good substitute. It smelled nice enough, and we were off!
We got our fruit form the market, made dinner and settled down for an evening of tex mex food movies and general pigging out.
This morning (I use the word morning very liberally here) we set about making the jam.
We didn't get off to a good start. I'd forgotten to bring the kitchen scales but after doing some maths we were set. Opened the preserving sugar and what was on the edge? Some gross looking kind of larvae!!! Now I don't mind the state of my fruit, you can cut bruised bits off and so forth, but larvae in my sugar? No thanks! So we had to go to the shop and as my sis didn't want larvae sugar (as she named it) in her bin she packed it in a carrier bag to be thrown in a bin on the way.
We get back to find sugar all over the floor, the bag had leaked.
On closer inspection I say: This isn't preserving sugar, the crystals are too small!
Look in the kitchen - we'd thrown away the wrong bag...
the bag in the bin was her caster sugar we'd taken out of the cupboard in case we didn't have enough preserving sugar and the larvae sugar was still on the counter.
Talk about waste!
Once we'd made the jams and tasted them (especially the peach one) however it was all worth it!
The fig jam was yummy which I was surprised at as I don't like figs and it didn't exactly look appetizing.
The peach jam was delicious! The coulour, the texture, the smell and the flavour it was like heaven in a jam! We ended up "licking" the pan (with the help of bits of bread) almost clean...
Whoever came up with the idea of tea-jam was a genius!
And although I can't say anything about the earl grey version, having never tried it, the Lady Grey jam is brilliant!!!
My sister is going to talk to her boyfriend the chef to see if he can't order us a box of peaches at wholesale price and then we're gonna cook up a huge batch of this delicacy for everyone we know!
MMmmmmmm!
I think I'm just gonna nip down to the kitchen to have myself some crusty white bread with jam!
sab x
Which, I guess, is a good thing to get out of my system now while things are still in season and relatively easy (and more importantly cheap) to get hold of...
So off I went to my sis' yesterday for another jam making session.
My sister was not in the best of spirits, as she'd had a tooth pulled that day, but soon cheered up as we started planning and looking at recipes.
We decided to make two small batches of things we hadn't tried before, pick the one we liked best and make a huge batch of it for the christmas gift baskets we're planning.
The problem has been that we've liked the jams we've made so far too much to give them away!
After perusing some discussion we settled on fig jam and peach jam.
The fig jam is pretty straight forward and we used a recipe from blagger.co.uk which everyone should read regardless of your interest in fig jam recipes!
Now the peach jam was another story...
I'd found a recipe on another blog called saving the season for making earl grey peach jam which I thought sounded fabulous!
My sister on the other hand was doubtful...
After I managed to convince her we realised she didn't have any earl grey tea, she did however have some Lady grey which she figured would be a good substitute. It smelled nice enough, and we were off!
We got our fruit form the market, made dinner and settled down for an evening of tex mex food movies and general pigging out.
This morning (I use the word morning very liberally here) we set about making the jam.
We didn't get off to a good start. I'd forgotten to bring the kitchen scales but after doing some maths we were set. Opened the preserving sugar and what was on the edge? Some gross looking kind of larvae!!! Now I don't mind the state of my fruit, you can cut bruised bits off and so forth, but larvae in my sugar? No thanks! So we had to go to the shop and as my sis didn't want larvae sugar (as she named it) in her bin she packed it in a carrier bag to be thrown in a bin on the way.
We get back to find sugar all over the floor, the bag had leaked.
On closer inspection I say: This isn't preserving sugar, the crystals are too small!
Look in the kitchen - we'd thrown away the wrong bag...
the bag in the bin was her caster sugar we'd taken out of the cupboard in case we didn't have enough preserving sugar and the larvae sugar was still on the counter.
Talk about waste!
Once we'd made the jams and tasted them (especially the peach one) however it was all worth it!
The fig jam was yummy which I was surprised at as I don't like figs and it didn't exactly look appetizing.
The peach jam was delicious! The coulour, the texture, the smell and the flavour it was like heaven in a jam! We ended up "licking" the pan (with the help of bits of bread) almost clean...
Whoever came up with the idea of tea-jam was a genius!
And although I can't say anything about the earl grey version, having never tried it, the Lady Grey jam is brilliant!!!
My sister is going to talk to her boyfriend the chef to see if he can't order us a box of peaches at wholesale price and then we're gonna cook up a huge batch of this delicacy for everyone we know!
MMmmmmmm!
I think I'm just gonna nip down to the kitchen to have myself some crusty white bread with jam!
sab x
3 comments:
Haha "Larvae jam" another nice blog sab.
I love jams, but when you mentioned tex-mex, my taste buds kicked in quick with the memory trigger of days in san antonio, now you gone and done it, need a tex-mex fix.
oh my, felt like i was right there making jam with you.. made me laugh 'larvae jam'... wish i could have tasted some... but now im thinking of making peach jam... wish me luck.
http:/temmyno1.blogspot.com
Post a Comment