Gooseberry Jam

With 18 pounds of gooseberries in the freezer, I decided it was time to do something with them. And as I love gooseberry jam, that was top of the list.
It's not the first time I've made gooseberry jam, but it's been a while, so I looked up various recipes to check ingredients and time etc. There was a lot of variation in the amount of water to use, one website saying 150ml of water per kilo of gooseberries, another saying 600ml. I decided not to worry too much: it's easy enough to add more water while it's cooking or to let it cook longer, depending on how runny it looks in the pan.

I'm useless at metric measurements, so did some rough conversions as follows. As 1 kilo is about 2.2lb, and I was using 4lb of gooseberries, I decided it was close enough to say 2 kilos. Therefore I needed somewhere between 300ml and 1200ml of water. There are 568ml to 1 pint. Therefore 300ml is just over half a pint and 1200 ml is just over 2 pints. I chose to split the difference and use about 1.5 pints of water.

The last batch of gooseberry jam was a bit thick and a bit sweet - the taste of gooseberries seemed to be a bit lost in the sugar - so this time I decided to reduce the sugar a little bit.

The recipe I used is therefore:

4lbs gooseberries
3.5lbs granulated sugar
1.5 pints water
Makes 5.5 normal size jam jars

I started by putting empty jam jars in the dishwasher to sterilise them and warm them up. When the dishwasher had finished (while I was cooking the jam), I put the jars into the oven on gas mark 1 to keep them hot - we don't want jam jars to explode when we put the jam in!

I topped and tailed the gooseberries. This is easiest done when the gooseberries are frozen - the stalk and the bottom bit scrape off very easily with a finger nail, and you don't squish the gooseberries all over the place either!

I put them in the cooking pot with the water and turned on to a normal cooking heat. I let them bubble away for an hour or so, stirring occasionally to help the gooseberries break down. This was a normal boil, not a rolling boil - no need for the rolling boil at this stage.

When the skins have really softened up and broken down, it's time to add the sugar. Apparently, once the sugar is added, the gooseberry skins won't soften or break down any more. Turn the gas down first and add the sugar, stirring well to make sure it all disolves.

Then it's time to turn the gas up again. I didn't bother with a really high rolling boil, just a very-slightly-higher-than-normal boil. I kept that going for another 10 minutes or so while some small plates were chilling in the freezer. Every few minutes after that, I put a small blob of jam onto a chilled plate, waited 30 seconds and tested for a wrinkle. As soon as I got a wrinkle, I turned the gas off.

Then I ladelled the whole lot into the jars and put the lids on while still hot and left them to cool.

Verdict: Lovely jam! Got a good set without having to boil the living shit out of it. Got a lovely taste using slightly less sugar than in other recipes. Friends and neighbours have had 3 jars already. Looks like I'll have to make some more pretty soon ....

Elephant Garlic

It's been a long time coming, but finally got some elephant garlic!

The missus went to Masterchef at Olympia the other day, and one of the stalls was selling it. They had 3 cloves left so she snapped them up. And they are huge!

Elephant garlic is not a true garlic - it's more closely related to leeks than to garlic, but forms a bulb of cloves like garlic does. It has a milder taste than normal garlic.

Having read up on growing elephant garlic, I have decided to grow it in large deep pots. They are the 9 and 10 inch pots that I normally use for tomatoes. I have used basic compost from the garden centre.

The cloves were buried about 2 inches deep and the pots left out on the patio with the other normal garlic. Now just need to wait and see what happens!