Dog Day afternoon! (Blackcurrant jam)

Today was the our first full day with our new puppy Bruno. He is a border collie rescue dog, and pretty damn sharp! He is already coming to his name and sitting on command.
We spent as much time in the garden as possible in an effort to kickstart the house training. It is starting to click with him where he is supposed to go, now he just needs to go there!
Garden time meant that I had lots of time to pick blackcurrants. It is a time consuming but very enjoyable task. I am sure there is a speedy efficient way to pick them, but I have yet to stumble upon it. The dog was very involved, inspecting tne contents of my basin from time to time, and sampling the odd dropped berry. I think he just sucked the juice and spat out the berry. Either way I feel he has had a paw in the making of this jam! Bless his little cotton socks if he is not all tuckered out now and fast asleep with his new buddy.

With such a crop of blackcurrants, jam was really the best use of this bounty, so I fished out my Ballymaloe cookery school book. Honestly who else could you turn to when it comes to the self-sufficiency of jam making only Darina herself. There is something very reassuring about her traditional recipes. They are written with conviction, experience and gravitas. No mere mortal could ever question her judgement on such matters. Her book is comprehensive in its details. You are given clear instructions on sterilising jars,storage, equipment etc. I felt tremendously equipped.

After picking about half the berries on the bush, I felt I had more than enough, so proceeded to de-stalk them, a task ideally suited for someone whos' primary objective was to monitor the bladder habits of a 10 week old puppy. This process takes some time. For my 800g of blackcurrants, this took an hour and a half. The type of job that is supposed to be good for activating the creative side of the brain. Indeed I found myself dreaming up colour schemes for the new flower bed I will never get around to planting.

(This is not 800g but merely a pretty picture!)

Next, I located a few jam jars and cleaned them thouroughly. (Or rather, Declan cleaned them thoroughly!) They need to be sterilised and Darina details a number of ways to do this including putting them through the dishwasher. I filled them with boiling water and emptied them out and put them in the oven preheated to 180c to dry. They only take a few minutes to dry out, and then they are ready for filling.

So next. I used a wide heavy bottomed saucepan and greased it. Then in went my 800g of now washed blackcurrants and 530ml water. Accurate quantities are very important as jam making is as much chemistry as it is cooking. Or 'Alchemy' as Nigella calls it.
With blackcurrant jam you must let the berries cook down until they are burst and soft so they don't end up tough in the jam. This takes about 10ish minutes. In the meantime, put 1kg of sugar into a stainless steel bowl, I used the lid of roasting tin, and put it into an oven at 150c for 10 minutes. Add the sugar to the softened fruit and stir until dissolved. Bring to the boil and cook for 20 minutes stirring frequently.  You can skim the foam off as you go. To test that it is at setting point, you can use a candy thermometer, and when the mixture reaches 105c it is done, or you can every few minutes (after about 15 mins) put a teaspoon of mixture onto a cold plate and allow to sit for a few minutes. If it wrinkles when you push it with your finger, then you are ready to pot it up.

I skimmed off the last little bit of foam from the top and ladled the mixture into the jars.
I was not really prepared for potting jam, so I only had parchment with which to cover the jam. I got 4 pots out of this mixture. Can't imagine it will last too long, we do go through jam in this house.
Probably not a good sign!

When the last bit of jam that I put in a bowl had cooled, we tried it on some buttermilk pancakes. I had some batter left over from this morning, and made little bitesized ones just to test the jam.

I was terribly pleased with myself, with my new dog, homegrown berries and homemade jam on pancakes. Although my waistline is not really benetitting from such an exercise, this is the kind of cooking that kids love, and it teaches them really how much damn sugar there is in jam!

Bye for now and woof from Bruno x