sept 06 good cateress newsletter

As I stand peeling and chopping peaches from the North Fork for an end of summer jam and a peach-ginger chutney. I cannot help but reflect on jam -and chutney - making in my childhood.

My earliest real memory of making jam with my mother is when I was 10 years old, we were living on Salisbury Plain, in the South of England. We were an army family and this was the first time I had lived in England since I was three. In the 60’s Salisbury Plain had vast tracts of land owned by the Ministry of Defense used by the army for Exercises. It has always been a strange irony for me, that the MOD lands took in some of the best preserved natural landscape, where wildlife was still abundant. In the late spring and early summer we walked the areas around Sidbury Down, picking wildflowers - this was the 60’s remember, and no-one foresaw that England's natural resource becoming so diminished in a few years. I recall one walk in particular when we picked one of each flower that we saw, so that we could go home and look them up in our wildflower book. We got home with over 20 varieties.

By late summer the hedgerows were laden with blackberries, large and juicy, deep purple mixed in with the green and reds. We set off on a warm Sunday morning; we lugged baskets, buckets, trugs plus a walking stick to reach the high berries, somehow always the sweetest. We had a picnic for lunch: cheese and tomato; ham; chicken sandwiches and thermoses of orange and lime squash. Our friends, the Theobalds, were with us, and all of us children were very excited, skipping along laughing, talking about who would pick the most berries and no doubt replaying England's win in the World Cup earlier in the summer.

High up on Sidbury Down, we found our spot, a meadow filled with long pale grasses and waning summer wildflowers, blackberry bushes scattered through the meadow and forming a natural hedge around it all.

After our picnic we set to work; the sun beating down on our backs, we could even take off our cardigans. The children picking and eating at the same time, the quiet afternoon disturbed occasionally by shrieks -- there were wasps around us, we were caught on the brambles or our hands had got scratched. Our fingertips dyed purple from the juice. Our various containers filling rapidly with the bounty.

Walking home late afternoon, cooler now, tireder now; laden with berries, talking about pies and crumbles to be made for dinner that night, our preferences for cream or custard.

But before dinner could begin, the blackberries reserved for jelly would be washed in the large colander in batches, then tipped into the largest kettle , apples cut up into the blackberries for their pectin, and the whole set on the fire to start cooking. When mum deemed the batch ready; Dad would be called to stretch the large square of old linen sheet over the crockery bowl . As she tipped the hot fragrant mixture, we would watch the purple liquid come through the sheet into said bowl, the sheet tied at the top of the blackberry mixture and set to strain overnight, extracting all the juice, a clear purple nectar.

The next morning an astonishing amount of sugar would be added to the liquid which was put back on to boil. Amazing to us all, as we learnt to tell how the boiling bubbles would change as the set got closer. Our old jam jars were washed and in the oven sterilizing ready to receive the jelly. Many of the jars with previous years labels on them, like layers of paint on a wall, each layer revealing part of a different story.

We ate the jelly all year ‘round, on toast, between layers of Victoria sponge cake, on rice pudding, each bite a taste of summer happiness. Other people we knew made their own syrups, wines and jam.

I make the blackberry jelly occasionally here in NYC, and it tastes almost the same, but the experience is a different one. Now I go to Union Square and buy the apples and blackberries from the farmers; I have a jelly strainer; I buy my mason jars at Zabars.

Now my favorite jam now is damson. It is unlike any other jam, with a richness akin to eating purple velvet. One year I lazily left the pits in the fruit when I cooked it, so you had to remove the pits as you consumed the jam. That year my mother, came to visit and went to try the Damson Jam; I never heard the end of the pits. Needless, to say I now pit the damsons. I am awaiting their arrival in the market, maybe next week.



Blackberry and Apple Jelly

2lbs Blackberries
1lb Apples, tart - granny smith or something similar
2 cups water

Wash the blackberries; wash and cut up the apples, without peeling or coring. Put the fruit in a pan with the water and simmer gently for about 40 minutes, until the fruit is really soft and pulped.
Strain through a jelly cloth overnight.
Measure the extract, return it to clean pan with 1lb sugar to 2 cups of liquid extract. Stir until the sugar has dissolved; boil rapidly until setting point is reached by testing. I take liquid from entre of pan and put a small amount on to a plate, after a minute or so, I push the liquid with my finger, when ready a skin forms on the jelly.
Pour into hot, sterile jars, tighten lid and leave to cool.