Jam Session

TThis week I decided to make use of the 4lb of blackberries that David gathered from the clifftops the other week and, after collecting some of  our neighbours' windfall apples, I had a go at making Bramble Jelly.

It was quite an adventure - household alchemy at its best as the juices dripped slowly through a jelly bag before being cooked with sugar and brought to that slightly terrifying violent boil that raises it to setting point, while the whole kitchen smells tantalisingly fruity!
 
The Bramble Jelly having proved succesful and the windfall apples being so plentiful I decided to try out a very frugal recipe for Apple and Orange Jam. I have a feeling that this may be a wartime recipe for a marmalade substitute, based as it is on apple puree and orange rinds. I have it written in my precious 'Recipes I Might Get Round To Trying One Day' notebook without a source, so I cannot be sure where it came from. It produced a lovely light golden 'mock marmalade' and I was delighted to see the peel evenly distributed throughout. Yes, sugar was severely rationed during the war, but an extra amount was allowed at jam-making time in order to help preserve some of the results of all that Digging for Victory with Mr. Middleton!

It was nice to be able to pass on a jar of each variety to our lovely neighbours, whose apples had been an essential part of the process, and of the celebration of the Late Harvest, Mabon, and the Equinox as the year slows down towards the Autumn, and the changing colours and the darkening evenings bring their own pleasures and treasures.

As the above picture shows, I have caught the bug, as the following day I made Three Fruit Marmalade, and Compost Heap Jelly (which uses all those pectin-rich apple cores and peelings, plus citrus peelings, which would normally go on the compost heap!)

The Three Fruit Marmalade recipe came from the back of a bag of T*** and L***'s Preserving sugar. To my taste it's over-sweet, advocating as it does a whole kilo of the said sugar. Surely T*** and L*** wouldn't encourage us to use more than necessary of their excellent product...?

The Compost Heap Jelly recipe came from the excellent River Cottage Handbook 2 - Preserves by Pam Corbin, which I would thoroughly recommend to anyone planning to try their hand at jam making. It also covers chutneys and pickles, bottling, etc and I am going to have to get myself a copy soon. I have added my own sticky fingermarks to the existing ones in the copy I've borrowed from the local library.....frugal as ever!