Strawberry jam - I must be mad

"Making jam is not dissimilar to making a loaf in as much as it can change your opinion of your own cooking. There is the same sense of accomplishment and quiet amazement that you, the last person on earth to bake or preserve, has got a supposedly mysterious craft so deliciously right. And as you press that sticky label on the last jar there comes a sense of doing something a bit 'grown up'." Nigel Slater

Well I haven't stuck on the labels as yet and anyway David does that bit, but today I did make some strawberry jam - mostly because I was so inspired my own achievement at making all that marmalade. The labels are on the marmalade though. We shall have to wait for the jam to cool before we can label them.

And I have to say I feel rather pleased with myself. Well I don't know whether the jam has set sufficiently not to just run all over the place, but at least the strawberries look to be evenly distributed throughout. The marmalade has set though which is always satisfying.

However, when I came to read up on the subject I find I have done a lot wrong. So I'm trying to tell myself that I'm right and they're all wrong. Or, if I'm wrong, it doesn't matter anyway.

First of all, I have of course, used supermarket strawberries - those big solid ones that don't go off - unlike the ones we used to get that Felicity Cloake describes as "forever teetering on that fine line between ripe and rotten." Strawberries today do not go off nearly as quickly. So no doubt the critics would malign me for using these terrible mass produced berries - from Queensland no less. But they were so cheap that I couldn't resist - which is the other reason why I made strawberry jam. I had bought three punnets, which (a) were blocking up my fridge, and (b) I was never going to eat all by myself, so today I decided to buy another three and make jam. (They were 3 for $5.00.) Strawberry jam is relatively easy to make after all. Anyway, cheap, mass-produced, possibly underripe, they may have been but as the jam was cooking I can only say the smell was pretty yummy and very strawberry. Anyway where else am I going to get top quality strawberries without paying a huge price for them? I have pathetically tried to grow them - my mother seemed to do it with no trouble at all - but to no avail here. So one black mark to me from the food snobs.

Lots of them said to mash at least half the strawberries too. I didn't. I just quartered them. And they were so firm that I did not remove any squidgy bits at all. So, marginally not real I suppose.

Strawberries are notoriously low in pectin, but we don't have pectin loaded sugar here, so that wasn't an option. I could have bought some pectin but chose not to. Instead I added the juice of 2 1/2 lemons (to my 1.5kg of fruit - far too much according to the experts - and also the juice of two and a half oranges. I also put the few lemon pips in some muslin and threw in the pulp of both the orange and lemons that remained on the lemon squeezer. This was my attempt at adding pectin. Only tomorrow will tell me if it was enough. But I did also think that the orange might give it an extra flavour boost and that the lemon would counteract all the sugar.

"But I want jam that falls off the spoon with a sigh rather than stuff that bounces around like a hyperactive wine gum. The British jam maker is obsessed with setting, which they seem to favour over the softer, more louche style of jam preferred by the rest of Europe and the Middle East." Nigel Slater

I guess that's what I'm aiming for too. Rather like Felicity Cloake's perfect strawberry jam, shown below. So maybe I didn't do too badly according to the experts with that. Mind you tomorrow could show me that it's just completely runny.

Don't think mine is quite as brilliantly red looking as Felicity's though.

I have no idea how much sugar I added - some recipes say it should be a 1:1 ratio, some say half sugar. I just threw in the remains of the raw sugar I used in the marmalade, and about the same of white sugar. I guess it might have been getting close to 1kg, so approaching the 1: 1 ratio, but I am hoping that the excess lemon juice would dampen the sugariness a bit.

I also saw that you should wait at least 5 minutes (Delia said15) before you put the jam in the jars so that the strawberries wouldn't all float to the top. Looks like I waited long enough.

"once it's jam, it can't be strawberries anymore." Marilyn Wallace

Well yes - but maybe that's all to the good if you're using evil supermarket strawberries. Making them into jam probably makes them taste better. Same with tomatoes - well cooking them anyway. A bit like using slightly soft vegetables and fruit to make chutney.

Along the way, whilst I was 'researching' I found a couple of interesting things about jam's history from an article in The Guardian by Andy Connelly. Jam came on the scene relatively late. I could paraphrase, but he says it all so succinctly:

"Jam as we know it only seems to have emerged in the 19th century. It took a cheap and reliable source of sugar from the West Indies to make jams affordable. Before this, sugar was considered a spice and the price in Europe was such that only the richest could afford it. Preserves made from sugar were too precious to spread thickly on toast. Instead they were eaten as "spoon sweets" with feasts being capped off with the distribution of delicate silver spoons laden with fruit preserves. You may still be offered such treats with a glass of cooling water in the Middle East and eastern Europe."

And jam is changing in the supermarket too. Today, as well as that produced by the big multi-nationals - including the French ones, we have small boutique makers such as Maggie Beer - who is teetering on being mass-produced I would guess - and other much smaller and more local makers. I don't know whether strawberry is the most popular jam or whether it is apricot or raspberry. I suspect it's strawberry.

So yes I had a tiny mad moment. But now I have five jars of strawberry jam, maybe a little runny, and a great feeling of achievement. Not perfect though - like the beautiful looking Donna Hay version. But maybe that's all in the production of the photograph.

Maybe it tastes awful. Maybe I should also order it on a crumpet for my breakfast tomorrow. Or maybe I should make a batch of scones for the afternoon. I'm certainly not making a sponge. Can't do them.

"The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today." Lewis Carroll

Which is a bit of a miserable thing to say. But then, if you think about it, most of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass is a bit miserable. I don't think he was a happy man.

I am though. Happy that is. Not a man.

Now what about pineapple jam. They are a major bargain at the moment. Only $2.00 for a large one in the supermarket, and I think they were $1.00 at the market. Thinking about it. It would be a different gift wouldn't it?

POSTSCRIPT

Well it was a bit runny, so David cooked it up again in the microwave and now we just have the four larger jars. Tasted very good though, if not overwhelmingly of strawberries.