22.3.12

Jam Sessions

Like I give a fig.

Well I'd planned for figtastic February jam session but nature intervened - maybe it was the weird weather (or maybe I just got my months wrong) but it seems that my local fig patch doesn't fully ripen up until late March. So be it. I made plum, pluot and ginger jam in February instead, then forgot to post it.


A shame really as it turns out it's hands down the best Jam I've ever made and I should have snapped up the last of the seasons stone fruit and made a truck load more - unfortunately I only discovered how good it was after I'd given away all but the last jar. Bugger. 


So for the last month I've been foraging like a demon checking all the local trees and finding out whose fruit is finest. I've discovered two things. One - the bottom of the pram is a fantastic fruit basket and two, I'm not alone on the foraging front.


It has taken quite a bit of skill, time and investigation to find top trees that are in little known alleyways and therefore left alone long enough to get fully ripened. Discovering that many of my favourite were prematurely harvested has led me to shout "STOP PICKING UN RIPE FRUIT YOU BLOODY NOVICES! " in frustration more than once. 


Anyhoo. I have made two batches so far, the first was a little over-reduced and so while delicious is a trifle difficult to spread. So, for batch number two I adjusted the lemon and sugar ratios.  



Unfortunately I overdid it on the lemon and under did it on the sugar... and batch number two while again delicious is a little runny... so officially its now "fig conserve" with serving recommendations that include stirring it into porridge and pouring it over vanilla ice-cream. As it turns out these figs are tricky people. So who's the novice now. BECK



1 comment:

Saskia said...

You have me all inspired. That looks delish. I was given a bag of fejoias yesterday. Had no idea what to do with them - they taste a little too freaky for my liking. Stewing them down into a jam could be the trick!