Wild Cherry Jam

2nd July 2010

As I trailed around the local woodland with the dogs I looked at the wildflower meadows planted by the schoolchildren a few years ago and thought that I must get better at flower identification. It’s on my list of things to learn…

Wildflowers sown by the local infants school

Then I noticed something…

What’s that in that tree?

A quick investigation revealed:

Cherries – billions of them!

Small, sour-sweet, dark and juicy, trees full of them!  I don’t remember seeing these at all last year…and they’re everywhere, trees full of them, dark red, bright red, big ones, small ones…

Never being without a bag, I’m a dog walker remember? I stood and picked a dog bag full, about 3lbs in weight. I looked as if I was a member of the cast of the recent promenade version of Macbeth the students did here with my hands stained red with cherry juices.

At home, I washed and sorted my cherries out.

Beauty in a colander

Then consulted Pam Corbin; no cherry jam recipe. Cherries, high in acid and medium pectin it said though. So I de-stoned them, one of those contemplative activities, in which one half of the brain says, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this’, and the other half says, ‘Yeah, yeah, but once in a while it’s fine to do this and you started this by picking them in the first place so just get on with it. ‘

Then I washed the fruit, put them in a pan to heat up and gently cooked them till the skins had softened. Don’t add sugar till the skins are soft.  Added the sugar, heated it till it dissolved, completely, added the juice of a lemon and a little commercial pectin and then brought it to a roiling boil (I love that word!) and it was ready in about 7 minutes. I use a sugar thermometer to monitor the temperature, usual setting point is 104 – 106 C.  Test for a set by putting a teaspoon of jam on a cold saucer,  turn off the boiling jam while you wait to see if it has set enough. It should wrinkle slightly when you nudge the test spoonful once cooled.  If it hasn’t then turn the heat back up again and bring it up to temperature once more.

Tip: the time to stir is when you are slowly dissolving the sugar, once you start boiling the jam, don’t stir as it stops the jam coming up to temperature quickly which is what you want, in order to have a nice fresh tasting jam.

This first batch pictured here was made with 50 percent sugar to fruit weight and was destined to go in the fridge and be eaten quickly. I wanted a tart jam that really tasted of cherries.  I made a second lot later with 1 kg of sugar to 750 g fruit that was hopefully to be kept longer. But I was guessing here as to what the correct ratio is. Edit: I have done a little bit more research and the most commonly advised proportions are :  60 per cent sugar to 100 per cent fruit weight. If the cherries are sweet then add a tablespoon of lemon juice for each kilo of fruit. You will probably need to add some pectin, either home made or commercial.  Suggested proportions and lots more useful information can be found here where I found it on the Allotment Vegetable Growing site.

Bubble, bubble…

I love cherries and cherry jam is my joint favourite jam along with damsons, and I’m down to my last jar of that, so the cherries should keep me going for now :)

Wild Cherry Jam

And here it is for breakfast on some of that soya linseed bread that makes fabulous toast….an all time favourite Dan Lepard Guardian recipe.

Cherry jam on soya linseed toast

Beer Bread with Roast Barley Malt

Brian's pic of his fifth slice

It’s almost the end of flaming June and I had one bread left to bake for Mellow Bakers. I’ve been baking lots of sourdoughs and pizza this month,  but there was this one left to have a go at.   Jeffrey Hamelman doesn’t specify the beer, so my fellow bakers have produced very different looking breads, it’s been interesting to see what they have come up with. If you want a peek at what they have been doing in the way of beer breads.  Click here.

So what did I do? I had some roasted barley malt flour from Bakery Bits, so I skipped the part about malting my own barley, which is just as well, as it is really hard to get hold of barley that hasn’t been processed in some way that you can sprout. I can get hold of wheat and rye which are viable, barley for some reason not.

What beer? JH says he used a strong south German beer.  It didn’t give me enough of a clue, so I went with Guinness, it’s dark, sweet and mild and I thought it might be a good one for this bread.

One long straight slash

I’ve never used beer as the straight liquid into a final dough before.  I’ve made barm bread and stout hot cross buns, both Dan Lepard recipes; in those formulae the beer is introduced at an earlier stage in the process, either as part of a sourdough starter or a poolish, and the breads don’t smell of beer once baked which I much prefer.

Cooling on the rack

However, Brian said, “Nothing wrong with this bread!” and ate half the loaf.  It looks paradoxically like it should taste really strong and dark, but it didn’t. It was just a crusty yeasted loaf in disguise really. Soft crumb, crusty, mild tasting with a hint of sweetness and malt, no bitterness, but then Guinness isn’t a bitter beer.  I made it as a long oval shape,  proved in a cloth inside a banneton, and that seemed to work out all right. It had a long final prove, about two hours in all.  So a perfectly nice loaf, great colour, split verdict on the smell.

Update: the following day the smell of the bread has changed and, well, I don’t really want to use this word, but…. it has mellowed :) not as beery, more of the aroma of the wheat and wholemeal and roast barley coming through – so if you make it, hold off for at least 12 hours before eating it.

What do you reckon?

Chicken Dinner in the Garden

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Hot summer days in this country are still a big event: precious and usually cherished. We celebrate by putting our thermals away and staying out late and attempting to do what those in hotter climates are born knowing how to do….cook outdoors.

One chicken dinner: four huge pieces of chicken, marinated in lemon, fresh oregano, sweet paprika and a little oil, squeezed onto the rack of our new barbecue, dome popped over the top and cooked in about 45 minutes, served with fresh radishes and spring onions and griddled lettuce,  and what look like carrot chopsticks and some other big hunks of salad vegetables.  A slice of sourdough, a few new potatoes. That’s about it…

You want a review? Messy, smoky, delicious. Some of the best chicken I have eaten in a long while, the dome kept loads of moisture in the meat, succulent is the word that springs to mind – I could get into this…. :)  All tips most welcome to this barbecue beginner!

No pudding, just a wander round the garden looking at the flowers.