Summertime brings baskets of strawberries and this is a way to feel all creative with strawberry jam sans the Grandma Moses all day jam for the masses routine. No sterilizing, no giant kettles with scary bolts on the lid. None of that. This yields one pot of the best jam I’ve ever had (due to a couple of not so secret ingredients). It’s enough for crepes, a batch of kolaches, toast, or just spooned out of the jar.
To get started you need to know the difference between jam and jammin, although I highly recommend the jammin part as background music while you stir the pot. It won’t take long.
After it starts boiling some people skim the foam off the top. I don’t because I don’t think it matters but you can if you’re just standing around watching it.
You don’t have to be constantly be stirring, but if you step away don’t step away for long. And remember, the more times you make this the better you get at just eyeballing the pot to know when it’s done. The great thing about strawberry jam is that if it’s a bit runny it’ll still be great over ice cream or cake or in smoothies or even toast. If you cook it too long stir in a bit of honey to thin it.
Once you’ve done this a few times you won’t go back to grocery store jams (except maybe in the depths of winter).
- 2 cups sliced strawberries (1 16 oz. container of berries)
- ⅔ cup sugar, scant
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- One 6-ounce glass jar
- ½ tsp. rose water
- ¼ tsp. scant almond extract
- Place a spoon into the freezer to use for testing the jam.
- In a deep pot, add strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice and let set for a few minutes to draw out the juices.
- Heat and stir until it reaches a rolling boil. Boil and stir until it thickens, 10 minutes.
- When it starts to thicken take your spoon out of the freezer.
- Hold the spoon for 30 seconds then tilt it. If it slides too fast, keep cooking. If it moves slowly, it is done. Test every minute or two and do not overcook it. As the mixture reduces you should notice a ring around the pot where it has shrunk from the original volume.
- Pour into a clean glass jar and let set.
Ajvar. Rhymes with cavyar, which is caviar in English and havyar in Turkish but everyone in the eastern Mediterranean knows it as an appetizer starring red pepper and eggplant. The supporting cast includes garlic, lemon juice and hot peppers. I think the “caviar” attribution comes from its ability to be spread on toast or pita like caviar but without the expense of caviar, making it the poor man’s vegetarian version.
The only challenge presented by Avyar is getting the peppers cooked so that they’re easy to peel. Some people will just tell you to cut them in half, lie them face down and put them under the broiler. However, I’ve found that they cook faster and better if they’re quartered. That way the inner part is mostly touching the cookie sheet and absorbing its heat. The other advantage is that with the skin side being flatter to the pan the peppers will char more evenly. Once they’re soft you need to put them in a bowl and cover with a rag or plastic. Don’t skip this step. Steam coming off the cooling peppers will make them easy to peel.
The eggplant can be sliced in half lengthwise and broiled in the oven. I’ve found, however, that if you peel and slice it into chunks, then cover it with foil it will cook in the same amount of time it takes the peppers. The foil will trap the steam coming off the eggplant which will speed the cooking process.
