Friday 16 November 2012

Poor man's jam....

Every family has one, an Aunty who is an amazing cook!  On Mikes side it is his Aunty Daphne, amazing cook, the most yummiest laming tons, peach pie and sultana buns - these three she is famous for!  And some day soon I will give you the recipe for her peach pie !  But today I made 'Poor man's jam' which is another recipe I have from her.  Now it is 20 years since I have tried to make this jam and that is  NOT because it is hard to make but disaster struck 20 years ago !  The story goes like this.................................................
a new bride trying to impress her new hubbie, got this recipe, followed it to the letter and then because it didn't have a time for the jam to boil rang her mother to ask......................got yaking..............forgot why she rang....................55 minutes later still talking......................remembered.............."Mum, how long do you boil jam for?" .............answer 15 minutes...............DAM !!!!!
Anyway it looked fine, so I bottled it, labeled and sat it on the bench in the kitchen, very proud of ones self.   Next morning we come home from the cow shed for breakfast and hubbie wants to try my jam............very excited I hand him a jar and wait for the praise of what a great jam maker I have married..................not to be......................he almost broke his wrist as he tried to put the knife into the jar!   After alot of laugher I took a jar outside and broke the jar onto the concrete and there before me was a perfect mould of the jar-but it was the jam, it was the toughest toffee I have ever come across.  but there is a good side to this, I made the jam today and it is perfect !   It is a raspberry jam made with kiwi fruit not raspberries.  Kiwi fruit at the moment in Taranaki is only $1.49 per kilo, so is very cheap to make at the moment.


Poor man's jam

6lb (2.7kg) Kiwi fruit
5 1/2 (2.5kg) Sugar
Juice of 2 lemons
270 mls Raspberry thriftee concentrate

Peel and cut up kiwi fruit, add to pot.  Aslo add lemon juice and raspberry concentrate.  Put on low heat until soft.  Then mash.  Then add sugar and boil till set.  I have found that time to be 15-20 minutes.  I have mine as a rolling boil.  Then bottle.
This made me 14 jars.  Hontestly it tastes like raspberry jam-unless you tell them that it is made with kiwi fruit they will think it is 100% raspberry.

Good luck with the recipe, Michelle.

4 comments:

  1. Lovely story Michelle, I so enjoyed reading it. The jam sounds very interesting, maybe I should try it sometime.

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  2. It is a special story to hand down with the recipe. Looks yummy.

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  3. Teehee! Sounds just like when I made strwberry jam for the first time!! I bent a knife :-)

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