Jam Session

I come from a long line of jammers and jellers, canners, picklers and relish-makers. Back in Virginia, where I’m from, the sweaty, humid summers were made more so by days spent in a steam-filled kitchen, sterilizing jars, peeling and chopping and cooking fruit down to make jam, jelly and fruit chutneys.

Here in the Northwest, with our abundance of berries and stone fruits, it is a jam-maker’s paradise. And despite a closet-size kitchen, jam-making is in full swing at my house. Jam is one of the easiest things to make and it’s a great way to extend the summer fruit season and savor those intense, beautiful flavors when the grey skies and chilly drizzle are upon us. And if you don’t have time to make it now, you can freeze your fruit without sugar and make jam later, when the garden has calmed down. Home-made jam isn’t just for breakfast either. You can thin it with a little fruit juice or wine to make a sauce for pound cake, ice cream or dessert crepes or to line the bottom of a tart or as a filling between cake layers. Some jams work wonders as a savory glaze for roasted meats or vegetables if thinned with some vinegar or stock (anyone for roasted sweet potatoes glazed with plum jam?).

You can make freezer or refrigerator jam if you don’t want to deal with processing the jam in a hot-water bath, which is done for food safety reasons. I confess we never did this growing up and I’m still alive to talk about it, but for any novice jammer I suggest you get a book from the library or go to the internet. I like The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard and I found lots of good information online at PickYourOwn.org.

After you have some basic jam techniques and flavors in your repertoire, you will want to branch out. For truly inspired flavor combinations I am turning to Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber. Ferber hails from Alsace, an area in France famous for its fruits and fruit brandies known as eaux-de-vie. Among the dazzling array of offerings in her book are raspberry with violet, white peach with saffron and rhubarb with honey and rosemary. I have already made apricot with vanilla bean, with the last of the organic apricots from the Olympia Farmers Market.

(It would have been my second batch of apricot jam had I not decided to watch the Olympics while the first batch was cooking. Apparently Michael Phelps’ continual trouncing of his opponents in the Water Cube was not enough to keep me from falling asleep on the sofa, where I was awakened by the smell of scorched apricot-sugar mess that I am still trying to pry off the bottom of my pan. Lesson to all – you need to keep a close eye on your fruit-sugar mixture because it can very easily start sticking and the taste of burnt fruit is an unpleasant one.)

My next one will be blueberry and pinot noir, and I want to do a yellow and white peach melange but I may make it a threesome and include some of those donut or Saturn peaches. Then there is a plum tree in an abandoned lot near my garden plot at LaGrande, huckleberries in the fall and all those cherries I froze early in the season. If my tomatoes EVER turn red and I have so many I don’t know what to do with them all, I can always make tomato jam. I’ve come across a few tasty-sounding recipes recently…