Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Jamming NY style









This is a post from a few years ago when I spent an amazing summer in NY city, tick the box, cooking for a private home and living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a couple of crazy people that turned out to be great friends.
I thought this would make a great 'just before christmas' post as home made jams in cute jars make a great gift and also everything that tastes great in jam is actually in season, peach, strawberries, rhubarb ect.
Here we made strawberry jam and rhubarb jelly. The later is not so popular in Oz but is very similar to jam and popular in the states. The following recipe is the one we used for the strawberry jam, from a great book on conserves and preserves by Christine Ferber, a legendary French cook, the book is Mes Confitures.

Gariguette Strawberry
1.1kg Gariguette strawberries
4 cups granulated sugar
Juice of 1 small lemon

Rinse all the strawberries, drain and hull them. Let the strawberries macerate overnight with the lemon juice and sugar in a ceramic bowl in the fridge, cover with a sheet of parchment paper.

Next day, bring this preparation to a simmer in a preserving pan. Pour it into a ceramic bowl and cover with parchment paper, refrigerate over night.

On the third day, pour this preparation into a sieve and bring the collected syrup to a boil in a preserving pan, skim and continue to cook on a high heat. This will be concentrated at 105 degrees Celsius. add partly cooked strawberries, return to a boil. Skim and continue to boil for 5 mins, gently stirring. Check the set. When ready put the jam in jars and seal immediately.

Ready to give to family and friends as a little stocking filler strait from the heart!

in these pics, we are also making the rhubarb jelly from the same book, so clear and beautiful wih our gorgeous friends Yossy and Ellie!