Cherry, apricot and peach Jam

Sunday 10 July 2011

On Saturday while shopping for meat to BBQ, we happened upon cherries at €2.99kg, I bought 1kg and noted that they also had some nice ripe apricots’ I also got 500gof these. So Sunday morning was taken up with jam making.
I decided to make a spiced jam, Linda was set to work de-pitting the cherries and de-stoning the apricots. I then thought what would go well with those? I chopped half a chilli, grated some fresh ginger and some nutmeg into a mortar and crushed it all together, just then Linda came into the kitchen with the remains of the fruit, I had told her to keep whistling but she did stop every now and again! When weighed I found that I was about 200g light (this could be due to the removal of pits and stones or during the whistle stops, the jury is still out on that one). I had some nice ripe peaches, so they pealed and de-stoned made up the 1.5kg of fruit

I picked a few sprigs of Thyme and stripped the leaves.
The jars varied from herb jars from my Turkish shop, to specially bought jam jars, these where washed along with the tops in hot water and then sterilised in the oven.

I used 3:1 jam making sugar; I have used this in the past and find it delivers a good result
.

So all into a big pot and set it off slowly to boil.

Boiled up and used the saucer test so that it came to the correct thickness.

Poured into the jam jars, I find the funnel a great help (I also use it for filling home made blut and leberwurst).

Lids on and turned upside down.

And that was it, one of the jars not quite full went into Linda’s bag (we always have a bag of food stuffs after visiting each other)

Ingredients:

1kg of cherries (un-pitted weight)

Made up to 1.5kg of fruit flesh with apricots and peaches.

500g of 3:1 jam makers sugar

Half a chilli pod de-seeded chopped and pounded in a mortar, added some grated ginger and nutmeg.

That was it easy peasy!