Skip to main content

Oratia Plum Jam




Photos by Alessandra Zecchini ©


Plum jam is one of my favourite, and as I live near some beautiful orchards in Oratia, west of Auckland, I like to make the most of the plentiful supply. This year my neighbors invited me to pick from their fruit trees, the variety was great and the fruit delicious.










Plum Jam


Ingredients

For each Kg of plums I used 600 g of sugar, (because I like my plum jam a little tart) and one teaspoon of pectin.


Wash the freshly picked fruit and place in a large saucepan with a little water. Bring the fruit to a gentle boil. When the fruit is simmering add the sugar and stir well. After 5 minutes add the pectin. Simmer the jam for about 5 more minutes and then pass through a sieve, discarding the stones.

Place the hot jam in sterilised jars, dried in the oven. At this point you can add to each jar a cinnamon stick (for dark plums) or a long pepper (for yellow plums); or you can wet the inside of the jar with a little grappa or brandy (an old Italian method). Either seal the jars with cellophane covers (available in all supermarkets) and secure with an elastic band, or use capsule lids (I use Quattro Stagioni brand).

If using capsule lids, seal the jars well, place in a pot and cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the jars. Let the jars cool down in the pot overnight and when they are cold make sure that the capsule has popped by pressing gently on the lid. Properly sterilised jars will keep for over a year.


I also made plum paste, but I will talk about it in another post...if it turns out well :-)





Plum on FoodistaPlum


Labels:

Comments

  1. DailyChefJanuary 28, 2010 at 10:37 PM

    Oh, how delicious! I used to have a plum tree growing up, but I don't remember ever making jam.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AlessandraJanuary 28, 2010 at 10:45 PM

    I think that it is one of the best jams for making pies and tarts ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. JoJanuary 30, 2010 at 11:00 AM

    I am waiting for my jar ;)!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mary BergfeldJanuary 30, 2010 at 2:19 PM

    How lovely this looks. I forget that your summer and mine are not in sync :-). I'd love to be making jam now. Your photos today are spectacular. You've brought a bit of summer to my kitchen. Have a wonderful day. Mary

    ReplyDelete
  5. AlessandraJanuary 31, 2010 at 7:32 PM

    True Mary, I feel the same when I read blogs from the Northern Hemisphere!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book  Sweet As...  where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal
9 comments
Read more

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel
13 comments
Read more

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content
5 comments
Read more