Making Jam

This week my mother and I made some delicious jam. We were going to make a Rhubarb/Strawberry jam - based on this one from David Lebovitz (what a great blog!)

Anyhow, we couldn't leave well enough alone, so we ended up with a variation with Rhubarb, strawberries and red currants. It's delicious, and has a nicely complex flavour.

Rhubarb, Strawberry and Red currant Jam:


1.25kg rhubarb, trimmed and sliced into 1/2-inch (2cm) pieces
250g strawberries
200g red currants
250ml apple juice
1.3 kg sugar
juice of one lemon
pinch of salt


1. In a large pot, mix the rhubarb, berries, and the apple juice. Cook, stirring frequently over moderate heat, until the rhubarb is cooked through and thoroughly tender. It should take about 15 minutes.

Put several saucers in the freezer.

2. Add the sugar, lemon juice, and salt, and cook, uncovered. You want to get to a rolling boil, which is beyond simmer, and spitting a bit.

To test when the jam gells, you take one of the cold saucers, put a teaspoon of jam on it, and chill in the freezer of 5 minutes. If the surface wrinkles when you nudge it with your finger, it's done. This may take longer then you expect, but be patient, the redcurrants and lemon juice will help with setting.

If you put it in the jars before it's done, it will be runny. If you cook it for too long, it will be impossible to spread. Either way, you can probably find a good use for it :-)

Once it's gelled, you need to put it in clean hot jamjars - a dishwasher cycle will work for both, or heat them in the oven. Get the lids on fast. The jam will keep for a few months- but it may not last that long....

Fruit in the garden

We have just moved to a new garden, so we need to restock. In deciding on what fruit to plant, I am guided by my own taste buds. What do I love to eat and cook with?

A good few years ago, one of my roommates declared that he loved gooseberries (I'm indifferent), so I planted one. Every year it fruited, and no one ever picked any of the fruit. I suppose that the birds were grateful, but I learned a good lesson.

So far we have bought 2 blueberry bushes. This particular variety needs an acidic soil, so we have also bought some ericaceous compost to dig in. However, in doing some research on this, it sems like coffee grounds and tea leaves may have the same effect, so I will do some experiments with that.

We have ordered 2 apple trees from Seed Savers (www.seedsavers.ie), and a Conference pear. In marked contract, we have bought a pear tree, and a cherry tree from Lidl, it will be interesting to see which does better. According to my dear husband, who was dispatched to Lidl for the fruit trees, there was practically a riot over the apple trees, which is encouraging. The more people that are growing food, the better I like it.

We have a couple of strawberries growing in a planter. I'm hoping to convince one of my friends to pass on some alpine strawberry runners. And I'd like some summer fruiting, and some autumn fruiting raspberries. That will probably be enough fruit for now. Well, maybe a blackcurrant as well, just for the pleasure of pruning it.

This probably sounds like a lot, and indeed, we now have a large garden. However, in my tiny plot in Dublin, I had an apple tree, a pear tree, loganberries, raspberries, a red and a black currant bush. So don't be discouraged by lack of space. And in a lot of ways, fruit bushes require a lot less care than vegetables.