A friend has a huge plum tree in his backyard and invited me over this weekend to make plum wine. We spent a lot of time picking and sorting the under-ripe plums - figuring that the less ripe ones would make a flavorful but less sweet wine. Then it occurred to us that we were working ridiculously hard for something that we couldn't enjoy for three or four months at least! Being instant gratification types - and 'no project is too big' types - we decided to make jam as well.
I very loosely based the jam on some recipes from The Forgotten Skills of Cooking (best cookbook ever), mostly referring to it for general cooking times and pectin levels. I used 3 1/2 lbs of slightly under-ripe Italian plums, about 1 lb of blackberries, 1 cup of water, and 4 cups of sugar. In the end, the jam is a bit sweet for me, but not so sweet it makes me sick. Plus, the flavor is pretty potent, so you don't need too much of it.
I was a bit worried about the jam setting since I don't have any experience with plums and I know that blackberries have very low acidity. But I think we were saved by using under-ripe plums, and the jam set perfectly!
Also, I'm not sure that this has much at all to do with the process of making jam, but it is a very pleasant thing to make jam with an attractive man helping to pick and scrub the fruit.
No comments:
Post a Comment