Page 15 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2021

Dried General Tottleben pear
year-old Bellegarde peaches in the back bedroom (makes a change from finding water melons under the sideboard). The Bellegarde peaches knocked spots off
their commercially canned yellow cling counterparts. The canned Beth pears also did the same, there was no comparison between them and the commercially canned Bartlet (the American name for William
bon Chretien) co-incidentally Williams bon Chretien is one of the parents of Beth. The reasons for the difference is because my fruit was properly ripe, this improves the syrup.
Jam
Well, I couldn’t miss out the jam, could I? Pear and Vanilla Jam. My wife stumbled
across this recipe in a magazine, trouble was it refused to work out – it just wouldn’t set with granulated sugar, it was however great for drizzling over ice cream.
Ingredients: 2lb prepared pears, i.e., peeled, quartered and cored and dipped in lemon juice to prevent browning.
Sugar. 1lb. 14oz jamming sugar. Don’t apply the formula to this recipe. The maxim a pound of sugar to every pound of fruit will make this jam excessively sweet.
One vanilla pod – scrape out the seeds.
As any jam maker knows, pears have little or no pectin – the setting agent, it wasn’t until I cracked the pectin conundrum that I started to make better, indeed prize-winning jams. I use this formula for strawberries, cherries ripe plums and gages, mulberries etc.
Place two saucers in the fridge some time before you start the jam making.
Place the pear quarters, vanilla pods and seeds in a bowl with the sugar and marinate overnight. Pour into a maslin pan and cook the pears gently until translucent. Turn up the heat, rolling boil for a minute, turn off
the heat, place a small sample on one of the chilled saucers, wait for the sample to cool, then push you finger through it, the sample should wrinkle, if it doesn’t, turn the heat back on and rolling boil for a further two or three minutes and repeat on the second saucer. This should, excuse the expression, nail it. The longer you boil it
the more unattractive the colour becomes, eventually turning to toffee, better runny than over boiled. Remove the vanilla pod before pouring into sterile jars.
The sugar formula
The thinking behind the sugar formula is that two pounds of jamming sugar (this only works with Silver Spoon jamming sugar)
is not two pound of actual sugar, it is two
pounds of sugar/pectin, the pectin gives the jamming sugar its slightly grey appearance. For every one pound of jamming sugar, add an extra four ounces, ie, one pound four ounces in total. For two pounds of jamming sugar, add eight ounces, two pound eight ounces in total. I have found you can get away with splitting the sugar in half. This is how you do it.
Example. 4lb of prepared fruit.
2lb of granulated sugar.
2lb – 08 ounces of Silver Spoon jamming sugar. (Don’t use old jamming sugar). This reduces costs on sugar and on gas or electricity and with low pectin fruit virtually guarantees a fast set which preserves more of the natural colour. The setting time varies with the type of fruit and the state of the fruit which can vary year on year. You can use this formula on fruit with plenty of pectin like partially ripe plums, gages and damsons and save time boiling. ATB.
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