It was a beautiful (very) late summer’s day, the sun was shining, the sky blue, a light breeze from of the lake was keeping things just this side of crisp, one of our neighbors was having another garage sale, and a totally clueless little old lady had parked her white convertible across the front of my driveway – no doubt to save her that l-o-o-o-ng trek from the curb. The neighbor was graciousness itself, the LoL, entitled and amazed that anyone would presume to challenge her absolute right to park wherever the heck she liked.
*sigh*
I needed to make a pot of jam to restore my faith in the world.
Fortunately, I had some lovely plums in the fruit bowl that weren’t getting any younger, and a pretty nifty recipe from last year that makes one fine pot of plum jam.
INGREDIENTS
•4 cups plums, peeled, stoned, and chopped
•2 cups sugar
•1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Combine the plums, sugar, and lemon juice together in a pot over medium heat – the original recipe says to just cook the plums and lemon juice for five minutes before adding the sugar, but I always forget that bit until just after I’ve already added the sugar – so do what you like.
Cook, stirring often, until the sugar is dissolved and the plums softened.
Continue simmering for 15 or 20 minutes, until the mixture has reduced and is about as thick as honey.
Skim off and toss most of the pink foam and set the jam aside to cool – or pack into prepared jars and process in a boiling water bath for ten minutes.
I ended up with a touch over one pint of very nice jam, and my faith in the rightness of the world was somewhat restored.
Just don’t even think about parking your car across my driveway.
Note: in the original post, I had only made the plums into jam so that I could then turn the jam into plum sauce, a far superior substitute for commercial duck sauce. I did the same with this batch of jam, but it was really so good as jam that I thought both recipes deserved their own, separate posts.
SO.
Today: plum jam.
NEXT Friday’s Parfait!: plum sauce.
More or less the same recipe I posted last year, but with a few tweaks that I think make it just that much more better.
Come for the jam, stay around for the sauce, it’s all good.