“You reap what you
see.”
The harvest. This week I’m at my parents place in an old farm-house with a garden the size of a football field (such lucky people). Oh how I wish to have a garden in Berlin! Anyhow, I decided to take a part of their orchard with me in the form of jam jars and juice bottles. And so I begun plucking and cooking (believe me it was a large-scale production). As a result I’ve got a brand-new recipe for you today and one will follow tomorrow. Voilà: a recipe for pear and lemon jam with a hint of lemon balm.
Oh-so-lemony! Pear, lemon and balm jam
Ingredients (for 5 big jars of jam):
1 kilo of pears,
a hand full of lemon balm,
2 to 3 lemons,
500g of gelling sugar, (labeled 2:1 to produce fruitier jams)
Instructions:
- First, wash the pears and cut them into small pieces, let them simmer in a pot with a cup full of water (medium to high heat), leaving the lid on;
- Then squeeze the lemons and add their juice to the pears;
- Next, heat some water in the kettle, fill it into a pot or a bowl and disinfect the jam glasses in the boiling water (attention: very hot);
- Then set apart another bowl/ pot with cold water. Here we will let the warm jam glasses cool down later;
- Now the pears should be soft, so you can add the gelling sugar, stirring the mixture for approximately 5 minutes;
- Carefully fill the jam into the disinfected glasses , close the lids and out them into the cold water bowl upside down to seal them;
- Write labels for the jam and decorate!
Tip: I used 2:1 gelling sugar which means that you use twice as much fruit as sugar, giving the jam a richer and fruitier taste (yummy!). If you want your jam to be vegan, avoid gelatin, and make sure you use gelling sugar with pectin, or alternatively agar.
