Kitchen Jam

Local strawberries from Reeves and Gaerelick farms near Syracuse

Last summer, I was in a chipotle phase, adding a touch of pureed chipotle peppers in adobo to several jams. This summer, my low sugar jam experiments are going to include Pomona’s Universal Citrus Pectin.

I didn’t forget the chipotle – in fact, after tasting rhubarb mango and rhubarb strawberry (which became more of a sauce than a jam…note to self: do not use frozen rhubarb for jam!), I decided that the beautiful local strawberries that made their appearance a couple weeks ahead of schedule deserved at least one taste of chipotle.
Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

I went simple, and old school, this month for Tigress’s CanJam, where the secret ingredients were rhubarb and asparagus. The local asparagus isn’t ready yet, but the rhubarb is – and although mangoes aren’t local to central NY, they are in season, cheap and fragrant. So here goes:

Read the rest of this entry »

Image by Fighting Tiger via Flickr

March’s CanJam ingredient – alliums – is a serious challenge. Although I’ve got a pretty good recipe for Red Onion Marmalade, I wanted to try something a bit different.

It’s not local (unless it can grow under snow?) but beautiful ruby-colored stalks of rhubarb have been showing up in the produce section for a couple weeks. So I’ve got a cup of rhubarb ‘coins’ (finely diced rhubarb) macerating in two tablespoons of organic brown sugar for the first microbatch of March jam. I’m counting on the rhubarb to bring its high-acid to a party of red onions slowly cooked in blood orange juice and spices. I’m going for a brilliant red onion-rhubarb jam with a hit or orange.

Stay tuned.

Image via Wikipedia

Some cookbooks have truly impressive titles. John Ash’s Cooking One on One: Private Lessons in Simple Contemporary Food from a Master Teacher has a heckuva title. I was led to the book by a simple recipe for Roasted Lemon Salsa, which I first found here (with attribution to Ash’s work.) Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

I’d love to say this recipe is all mine – it’s so simple, it took me more time to type it up than to make it. But I can’t take any credit for inventing it; I just followed directions.

This jelly comes straight out of the insert in the package of Ball (R) No-Sugar Needed Pectin. I didn’t even juice whole pomegranates (which is quite the process) to get the raw juice for this jelly; I used POM bottled juice from the grocery store. One bottle of unsweetened 100% pomegranate juice, some lemon juice, 3/4 cup of sugar per cup of juice, 1 box of low sugar pectin – mix, boil, pour into containers and serve, can or freeze. It really is that simple. Enjoy!

BTW – full disclosure – neither POM nor Ball nor Sure-Jell/Kraft Foods have contributed in any way to the sponsorship of this post or my blog. But hey, folks at POM, Ball and Kraft, I’m sure open to the idea. Call me, or drop me an email. When it comes to jamming, I can (sometimes) be bought!

Pomegranate Jelly
1 box Ball (R) low or no-sugar pectin
3 cups sugar
4 cups pomegranate juice (100% juice, unsweetened)
2 tablespoons lemon juice

• Prepare the jars (sterilize, and then keep hot in either a pan of hot water, your dishwasher after the hot rinse cycle, or your oven set at around 200 degrees F.
• In a large saucepot, combine pectin with pomegranate and lemon juices and bring to a full boil. This jelly foams up and the bubbling doubles its volume, so use a large pot even if the amount of juice in the pan seems very shallow.
• Add sugar and boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
• Remove from heat, and skim off the foam with large metal spoon.
• Pour the jam into hot sterilized jars, cover with lids and rings.
• Process jars in a hot-water bath for 5 minutes according to the directions for hot-water-bath canning from the USDA.

Makes 5-6 one-cup jars of jam.