"They taste good to her"

Plums are so various, and the best and ripest ones are not easy to get if you don't have a plum tree. I get jealous just reading about mirabelles, greengages and the like. And I love plum jam; it may be my favorite. I was afraid that the potato-like supermarket plums I have been trying hopefully all summer would not be worth the effort.

The redfox and S. came for the weekend, and the plan was to make some jam. At first, we thought we'd have fruit that wanted some help jelling , and use the green apple pectin broth jelly I made last month. This spring, it seemed as if all the ripe fruits were pectin-deficient. Now that summer fruits are ripe, the pectin broth is not really a necessary ingredient. So we put aside the green apple jelly, and decided on plums. The pectin jelly will be a good thing to have this fall and winter.

My favorite relatives arrived with 6 pounds of some nice looking black plums from the enviable Cleveland market where they shop. The redfox accurately described them as "somewhere between sucky supermarket plums and farm plums." Their stickers said they came from California. I'd picked up some vanilla beans and some domestic Gewurtztraminer, since we had decided to do a Christine Ferber recipe requiring both. My wise child suggested that since the plums were neither extraordinary or exceptionally fresh, we might try a recipe with some extras. This proved a good move, I think.

Of course, the recipe did not require US wine, Ms. Ferber being french. I also did not require it. In fact, I was looking for a cheaper and very nice austrian kind I've had, but the downtown wine shop didn't have any imported gewurtztraminer. The shop lady in the "Wine Specialty Store" was put out that I asked for it. (She likewise thought it uppity of me to want maraschino liquor. Basically, she seemed to feel that I was both tasteless and insanely demanding. Shopping for alcohol in Pennsylvania is a treat.) Perhaps the wine and plums were meant for each other, both being west coast items.

We doubled the Christine Ferber recipe, and switched the "overnight" layover to an over-the-day rest, to allow for a big out-of-town cousins lunch and a bit of other socializing. Although the resulting double batch was not huge (11 eight ounce jars) it was a lot longer cooking up and jellng than my smaller batches-even in my magically fast copper preserving pan. It was fine, and fun, but I would not want to go any bigger.

We used 6 pounds of black california plums, variety unnamed, which had lovely red-purple innards. We quartered and stoned them. We then tossed them in a ceramic bowl with 9 1/2 cups of sugar(!) and 6 vanilla beans, as well as the juice of 2 lemons. This produced the fabulous party pink result you see above. The bowl was covered with damp, crumpled parchment paper, left to sit for an hour, and then scraped in into the jam pan. We brought it to a simmer, dumped it back into the bowl, and refrigerated it for 8 hours.

When it came time to put the fruit back in the pan, a layer of the pink sugar had formed a hard-ish coating on the bottom of the bowl. Some serious hacking and scraping was required to get in all out.

The smell of vanilla and plum was already intoxicating. We brought this mass to a boil in the preserving pan and then added 2 1/2 cups of the wine. Although the recipe for 1/2 of our amount suggested that in 5 minutes it should be at about 221F, and jelling, it took us more like half an hour to get it there. As there were 2 of us, we were able to mutually resist declaring it "done" early. It was very jelled indeed, and smelled like heaven on earth, when we scooped it into 11 eight ounce wide mouth plump little lowrider ball jars.

These jars and their lids had been sterilized in a boiling water bath. We filled them to 1/4 inch of the top, wiped the rims, fitted them with their lids, and left them to cool. This is a european processing method. If you wish to be completely safe, by USDA standards, you will proceed to process your jam in a boiling waterbath canner for the recommended amount of time. In either case, the next day, when they are cool, you must check the seal, by pressing down on the lids. If they go "boing" they are not properly sealed. You should put the boingers in the fridge, and use them up soon.

We had a jar which didn't seal, and nearly used it up for breakfast the next day with toast. Of course, you should let a jam rest for a couple of months to develop its flavors. But this jam is so delicious right now, that it is hard to believe we made it with ordinary plums. I'm enjoying "a solace of ripe plums." They taste good to me, and I recommend them to you.

Comments

[marianne]

if your jam doesn't set...what can you try with the sealed jars to make it set?

I made pomegranate jam - and it'll make fine syrup for pancakes, but I'd like it to be jam...

[lindy]

Sometimes, sitting on your shelf, jam may slowly set up further over time. I don't know of anything you can do with a sealed jar that will increase the set.
If you want to, you can open the jars, and cook it all down some more, maybe with a little apple jelly added, and reseal it. Or, syrup would be nice...on the pancakes.