Beside the Stream

When I found bags and bags of apricots at the bottom of the deep freeze, I got that spring-cleaning feeling that it was time to take care of them.  So I did. 

Sadly, the apricot raspberry jam is a bust.  It’s a beautiful color and has enough seeds that you think it might be raspberry, and when it turns out to be apricot it’s a big let-down.  But this apricot-jalapeno jam is killer.  It’s out-of-this-world.  It’s such a great invention that I thought I must be exaggerating and took some over to the bakery this morning, and they all agreed:  this stuff is darned good.

I learned to make jam from my friend Theresa who made jam her whole life, and died two and a half years ago.  She had very definite jam rules—there’s-a-right-way-and-a-wrong-way kind of rules—that I can share with you.  Here is my tower of ingredients:

I forgot to include a garlic bulb in the group picture, and now it’s too late; other critical ingredients include a bag of sugar, some lemons and jalapenos, and some bags of frozen apricots.  I’m sure you can use any kind of liquid pectin, but I always use Certo.  And I usually get new flat tops for my jars,  and reuse the ring of the two-piece lid.  (This is one of Theresa’s rules). 

The first step is to sterilize the jars (which I do in the dishwasher) and to clear a counter so you can spread out. 

Locate some clean kitchen rags, pull out your lobster pot, an enamel pot for cooking the fruit, and a food processor.

This is where another of Theresa’s rules must be taken into account: no matter how much fruit you have, you may never never EVER double the recipe. 

The instructions for jam is in the enclosure from the Certo package; their apricot jam recipe calls for 3 1/2 cups of fruit, 1/3 cup lemon juice, 5 3/4 cups sugar and a packet of Certo.   In those 3 1/2 cups of apricots I included 2 jalapenos and one clove of garlic,

split, seeded

and cut into pieces.

And that’s all the chopping that’s called for

because the food processor chips up the frozen apricots into perfect jam-sized chunks.  Do you notice that this whole series of photos has my shadow in it?  How gauche. 

Here’s another of Theresa’s rules: although the ingredients for jam are large quantities, they must be precisely measured.  If you do not use these exact amounts your jam will not set and you will have wasted your supplies.  (Theresa called sugar and Certo ”supplies”.)

You carefully measure all of the ingredients and dump them into the pan.  Put the flame on high, and start stirring. 

Keep stirring and soon it looks like this

and then you stir stir stir until it comes to a full rolling boil.  Really a full boil.  At that point you dump in the Certo all at once

and stir through a full rolling boil for 60 seconds exactly.  (Theresa’s Rule: count one potato, two potato, three potato….)  And then it’s off with the heat, ladle jam into each jar to within 1/8″ of the top, and slap on the flat lids. 

This is the step I don’t like, wiping the threads clean before you screw on the lids.  The jars are hot, and you need a wet rag to wipe with and a dry rag to hold with.  Toss all six jars into the lobster pot to boil for 10 minutes, and think about starting another batch. 

I have broken all of Theresa’s jam rules over the years, and she was always right.  Jam is supposed to be tricky, but if you follow her rules you can’t go wrong… and she would have thought this combination of apricots, jalapenos and garlic was the bee’s knees.