Trial and Error*

My first trial failed miserably, a total beginners flop.

Right after buying a lovely country house deep in the heart of France two things took on a major role in my life; things I had never stopped to consider before:

Planting a garden and making jam.

The first will be, hopefully, the subject for a future column. As opposed to my jam making skills, gardening is something I am very confident about and can say that on a scale from 1 to 10 I've become, through trial and lots of errors! a solid 8.

Once comfortably settled in La Petite Verronniere, a thoroughly charming house if ever there was one, my friend C, and I tried our hand at the art of jam making. In this case raspberry. By then I had purchased the whole jam kit and caboodle in Paris, at the BHV, a store which only compares to Ali Baba's cave.

Along with C. we went to the market and brought back three little plastic containers of raspberries. We put them inside a huge and impressive pot with a copper bottom, special for jam making, we topped it with water and sugar and saw the little mound of fruit slowly melt into a small red puddle. C.'s boyfriend, a rich oilman from Texas would call every ten minutes to check on our progress and also to check on the lovely Miss C. because aside from being obsenely wealthy he was also definitly married and afraid C. would find a less rich but more available suitor and dump him and his money.

"How many gallons are ya'll makin', dahlin'?" (Seriously. I think we barely had half a jar).

I knew then and there that I had to learn a lot about weights and measures.

One of my favorite recipes is apricot and mint jam with a touch of ginger

You can judge the results in the next photo and altough not as visually appealing as the one from the book my friend Y. gave me I assure you the taste is unequal. Sweet and tangy at the same time.

The second house recipe is the one for black cherry jam.

The process is the equivalent of slaughtering a pig to make blood sausage. You end up with dark purple juice all over the place. The purple underneath your fingernails will take forever to dissapear. Best wear an old shirt, have an oilcloth to cover everything and a saintly husband to help you take out the stones. The bastardy stones. But the results are yummy beyond description.

Now with full lockdown in place my husband got creative and tried his hand at apple and pineapple jam. (We've got tons of apples but no fresh pineapple so he used tinned fruit. I said to him: go ahead, what the hell, it's all cooked fruit, anyhow)

This time he got himself a helper or at least a wingman, because the thing about jam making is the time it takes for it to gel.

When it gels.

You need the patience of a Templar monk and the luck 'o the Irish or better yet a lot of experience since in my experience half of the time the thing stubbornly refuses to gel and remains like juice and the other half of the time the mixture sticks to the bottom of the pot and the whole kitchen smells of burnt sugar. Horrible. There's no point in using too much water. Fruit already has a lot. If too much excess water, laddle some into a small saucepan and heat it until THAT gels, and you got yourself an extra jar of jelly!

When you get it right it's like playing the course under par.

French ladies will seldom admit it but their secret is adding "Vite Pris", a kind of gelatin, to the liquid that makes it effortlesly gel. Voila! To those planning on making jam I urge them to buy a small box on the next, post pandemic, trip to France. A little box goes a long way.

Making jam is an art, albeit a minor and very messy one, but art nevertheless. It takes time to master it, but as the saying goes: "Time only respects that which is made with time".

In the meantime do not dispair, by trial and error, error and trial you can and will eventually get there.

*If you are interested in any of the above recipe please write to the inbox. Thank you.