Cookbook Challenge - Apricot Jam - 2 - $ - V - !

The Cookbook Challenge is back again in 2011 hooray! This year is a little different in that it's a fortnightly activity; lots of people found it very hard to catch up once they missed couple of weeks in 2010 - myself included.
If you would like to play this year you can sign up over here. Thanks to Penny, we are adding our own links to a special group rather than April doing a wrap up once a week throughout 2011. A big shout out to Shellie too for designing the great new logo!

When my friend Snake moved house recently we were a bit sad about the prospect of no more figs from his garden for making jam. But his new house also has loads of fruit trees and a veggie patch! So far I have had beautiful homegrown silverbeet, dill and parsley, so when he asked me would I like a bag of apricots it really was a no brainer.

Naturally when making the basics I turn to Dame Stephanie's The Cook's Companion and in this case it was for a jam recipe.
I did a few things differently which you may or may not choose to do too.
Firstly, I took the apricots to the pub, where they got trod on and some got a bit squished. Then I left the squished ones in the bag on a 34C degree day and forgot all about them. The 'one bad apple' saying applies here, so I had to go and buy some more apricots to make up the recipe weight.
I also added scraped in a vanilla bean and left the pod in the pot while the fruit reduced.

Regarding the kernels mentioned below I am not entirely sure that they are meant to end up like they did, but I am entirely sure that I deviated a fair bit from the method. Dame Stephanie says to put the stones in a napkin and hit them with a meat mallet. I put mine between some paper towel and belted them with a hammer. Therefore the kernels got quite mashed and floated all round the jam mixture when I added them. I ended up picking them out before bottling so maybe someone who knows better could leave us a comment about this?

Ingredients

1.5kg apricots
1 cup water
2tbs lemon juice
1.5kg sugar
Jars for bottling - you can read how to sterilise them over here.

Preheat oven to 160C degrees.
Cut the apricots into quarters and remove the stones, keeping half of them.
Add the fruit, water and lemon juice to a large pot and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes or a bit longer if the flesh hasn't broken down enough for your liking.
Meanwhile put the reserved stones between a napkin and smash them open with a meat mallet to extract the kernel. Have a smell of the kernels - remind you anything? Amaretto or marzipan perhaps?
Put the sugar and kernels in a cast iron pot or a tray and place it in the oven until it is 'hand hot'. This will take about 15 minutes. Add the sugar to the pot and stir until dissolved. Boil rapidly for about 15 minutes. Be VERY careful if you stir it as it might spit and hot sugar burns do not tickle.
Pop a spoon of jam on a cold saucer, cool in the fridge for a minnie or two and then run your finger through it. If the jam stays in two halves then it's ready to set, if not keep checking every 5 or so minutes.
Bottle the jam while it's hot and then spend the rest of the arvo cleaning the sticking kitchen as it will have ended up everywhere.
Serve on hot toast with lashings of butter.

Enjoy!

Fig Jam - 2 - $ - V - !

You know when something new appears on your radar and then all of a sudden it's everywhere? Like when you buy a car and then you see the same model all over the road.
For me at the moment that thing is figs. I've never been a massive fan but recently I had them cooked for me and they were absolutely delicious. It seems that every cookbook or magazine I now pick up has fig recipes when they didn't before! (Well they did, I just didn't care for them.)

These fruit are currently in season, increasing my chances of coming across them, and providing the opportunity to make jam. My friend Jake has a giant tree in his backyard and didn't want the glut of figs to go to waste so we turned them into, you guessed it, fig jam. And it is great - just like the acronym seen on coffee cups, in workplaces, the world over.

You need to do a bit of preparation before the jam making; the ingredients need to infuse for a few hours - ideally overnight - and the jars need to be sterilised.

Let's start with the jars. Wash them in hot soapy water and rinse well. Pop them in a big pot and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and let them bubble away for 10 minutes. In the meantime, heat your oven to 150C degrees and then pop the boiled jars in to dry completely. Make sure you do not touch the insides of the jars once they have come out of the pot and completed the drying process.
They are now nice and sterile and ready to be filled with your preserve.

Ingredients

1kg figs, trimmed and roughly chopped (be sure to weigh them after you trim them to get the exact weight)
500gm caster sugar (you can get special jam making sugar if you're worried about it not setting)
1 cinnamon stick
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out
rind and juice of 1 lemon

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well to coat the fruit in the sugar. You can pop the vanilla bean pod in too until it's time to put the jam into jars.
Ideally you want the ingredients to sit together overnight, but if you don't have time, two hours is the minimum.

Transfer the ingredients into a pot and stir to dissolve all the sugar. Bring the pot to the boil and then reduce the heat as low as it will go. Once the figs begin to soften you can mash them with a fork.
It will take 45-60 minutes for the jam to set. Stir regularly and make sure it's not sticking to the bottom of the pot.

According to Dame Stephanie Alexander, the best way to see if your jam is set is to pop a tablespoon of it onto a saucer and put it in the refrigerator for a few minutes. You then run your finger through the cold jam and if it stays separated it is set.
Pectin is the culprit that makes jam set, so for fig jam you want to put a few not-so-ripe fruit in, as these ones contain more of the magic pectin than the ripe figs.
Once the jam is set, remove the cinnamon stick and the vanilla pod and ladle the jam into the sterile jars. It will keep for around 3 months.

Enjoy!