Jammin, Take Two

The last jar of jam is almost gone, and I still haven't written about it!  So let me tell you, before the sweet taste is gone and forgotten, what the big deal is with homemade jam.

First off, it's yet another excuse for a trip to the farmer's market.  Thursday was misty so the market wasn't as bumpin' as it no doubt will become on the imminent hot summer evenings, but the die-hards were there, including all the farmers, who no doubt don't even notice a little mosquito piss.  Table after table were laden with greens and carrots (and turnips, and radishes, and snow peas, and...) and I began to get a little nervous-- was there any fruit to be had this early in the season?  And then, at the end of the lot, there it lay, the strawberry tent.  Strawberry flats, stacked into piles and pyramids, and two young farmer-cum-hawkers weighing and sacking the fruit and taking money just as fast as their dirt-stained hands could move.  And all the while Portlanders flocked around the first fresh fruit of the year, like zombies deprived of human flesh.

At $3.50 a basket though, and $35 a flat, I must say I was a bit taken aback by the price.  Do these rates sound normal?  I must say, I'm going to have to do a little price comparing next time I'm at the store.

Well, I bought four baskets-- about two pounds, once you take the tops off.  That's fourteen dollars worth of jam, not including the cost of sugar and lemon.  This better be good.  The berries were promising, though.  Small, but not too small (large enough to work with, but not those gargantuan, hydroponic blandberries from Safeway).  Ripe, but not too ripe.  And fragrant.  I dispensed one berry to each of us in the car on the way home.  Yum.  Summer is here.

So, wash, hull and slice right into a big skillet.  Squeeze half a lemon or so over the strawberries-- I had a Meyer lemon left over from the starvation cleanse!  Add about one cup of sugar per lb. of fruit.  Well, that's what I've been told, at any rate.  I ran out of white sugar, I didn't really feel like dousing my pure, sweet berries with two whole cups of sugar, so I put what I had of white sugar (a half a cup), and an equal amount of brown sugar.  I hoped for the best.

Then fill a medium-sized bowl with ice water, and set a smaller bowl within the water (but don't let any water seep in).  I'll tell you what this is for in a minute.

Stir up the fruit, lemon juice, and sugar.  Bring it to a boil.  Then turn the heat as low as you can, but keep it simmering well enough for the liquid to reduce.  The recipe I went from says it takes five minutes for the berries and liquid to cook down.  This is bull.  It took twenty minutes at least, and about five tests.

To test it for readiness, spoon about a half teaspoon of the liquid into the by-now-very-cold bowl.  Let it sit for 30 seconds.  Tilt the bowl.  If the liquid runs very slowly then your jam is done.  If it runs fast, it's not done yet.  Keep the heat on, and keep stirring.  Important reminder: stir it a LOT!  The pundits tell me that if you burn the sugary fruit, you'll never get rid of the taste.

This recipe does not require the whole rigamarole of pectin, sterilized jars, and vacuum-sealing.  This jam will not keep outside of the fridge, and in the fridge it'll last you up to two weeks.  But it's a good way to start your career as a jam-maker because it's easy and simple.  You can get complex and start canning for winter later.

And boy, was it delicious!!!  My berries yielded three small jelly-jars-worth of jam, plus enough for one bagel toasted with butter.  It was a bit runny (perhaps because I cut back on the sugar?  Didn't cook it long enough?), but hell, it soaks into the bagel better that way.  Now that I think of it, this stuff would be stellar on pancakes.  Also, I realized in retrospect that I sliced the berries pretty thick, because it was very chunky.  My younger self would have sneered at such enormous morsels of soggy fruit (I used to go for the fruit-free purple sugar gel known as grape jelly back when my palette was less cultivated), but I now know the error of my ways.  Now, I say, bring me the chunkiest jam you got. 

 

The final verdict?  Easy and fantastic.  If you try this, you'll definitely be enjoying your breakfasts this summer.  You might even re-instate a few times the wonderful childhood tradition of "breakfast for dinner."

Grace.