fig jam

At the house in the south, there is a cupboard full of jam, dating back to 2012. Some of the jars have gone black but not mouldy, some have lost their labels. Sometimes the sugar crystallises, the size and shape of forget-me-nots, floating white in the dark.

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The figs were small and green and tight even after a week of scorching heat and a series of storms. And then they ripened all at once, blushed purple.

The sweetest ones were too delicate to pick, their skin tearing at the stalk, staining my fingerprints. Stretch marks drew lines down from the point, a hint at the red flesh within. There were only two days left, not long enough to get sick of figs: a handful for breakfast, wrapped in ham for lunch, over salad and blue cheese for supper. So, I spent a last afternoon making jam. To pretend the summer was not over, to try to bottle a sunset or fluffy clouds in a blue sky. To stamp a memory while it was still fresh, at the risk of spoiling it, smudging its outline in the printing. Jam is delicious, but it is not the same as fresh fruit.

The row of jars were supposed to keep the panic at bay. Here is a shelf of summers. Here is colour and sweetness for winter breakfasts, a spoonful every morning in yoghurt, on a slice of bread.

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I wrote down, opening a homemade jar of jam is like celebrating a birthday rather than letting it go unremarked.

Jam is an existential crisis when you model yourself on a cartoon badger, is a real note I took that day. (See the children’s book ‘Bread and Jam for Frances,’ about which I am sure I have written before but I refuse to check.)

I spent a lot of my summer thinking about memory. I made a Time Capsule Project, in which friends posted me one memory of the two of us. I pitched it as primary school Proust. It was strange to receive a dozen envelopes addressed in my own handwriting, stranger not to open them. The collection fits in a blue biscuit tin, and I will read the cards in ten years’ time. In the meantime I have the winter to return the favour and send back a sealed memory to each person. Maybe we will write down the same one.

I take notes and make lists in my head because what if this is the last time? What if I forget, what if the other person is no longer there one day? As if there were an if in that equation?

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The kitchen window overlooked the garden and the shorn fields and the fig tree on the border between. The grass had dried to straw at this point, under crackled brown chestnut leaves that fell too early. In the pan, figs collapsed into petals in a speckled red liquid. Like distilling a bouquet.

I made one batch with half a pot of espresso as the base, and another with the juice of a lemon, its empty halves thrown in with the figs to steep.

The basic formula is 1 kilo of fruit, 100ml (10%) water or other liquid, cook until the fruit softens. (Optional: at this point, blend half with a stick blender for a thicker consistency.) Add 750g (or 75%) sugar and bring to a boil. Let it bubble until it sounds like lava, and drips slowly from a spoon.

I read a book with one hand as I mixed it slowly. I waited for the sound and size of the bubbles to tell me the exact moment when summer was fixed in amber, when to fill the jars and turn them upside down and wait again. One version was slightly more tawny, one a brighter red. Both tasted of sugar first, then figs, and behind, the ghost of something else. I gave some of the jars away. I haven’t opened mine yet.

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In my courtyard at home, a small fig tree is growing in a pot. It is now as high as my hip. It sprouted from the original and I carried it back on the train three years ago. The first winter it shed all of its leaves and I thought it was dead. The week that it was warm enough for a morning coffee outside, its buds appeared, paint brushes dipped in green ink.

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I missed writing, and drawing. Figs are laughably obscene to draw, impossible to copy the soft suede outside and red cilia within. But I enjoyed trying, and then eating my life models.

raspberry tangerine jam

In Perugia, I lived in an apartment with big windows and cold floors. My flatmates would force slippers onto me when I walked around barefoot in the morning. Then they would make me coffee, and in the evening, spaghetti. Sometimes pasta twice a day. Around this time of year, November December, we might just have roast chestnuts and vino novello for supper.

One of them – I can’t remember which one – used to leave the skin of tangerines, peeled in one long strip, on top of the radiator. So that the house would smell like citrus. Which reminded me of the passage below, from M.F.K. Fisher.

(I have a recipe for raspberry tangerine jam, which is a delightful combination. Perfect with toast or porridge, or in buttery cookies. You should make it on a December afternoon to warm up the house.)

But Fisher tells such a good story, I will leave her the last word. Enjoy. From Serve it Forth:

I discovered little dried sections of tangerine. My pleasure in them is subtle and voluptuous and quite inexplicable. I can only write how they are prepared.

In the morning, in the soft sultry chamber, sit in the window peeling tangerines, three or four. Peel them gently; do not bruise them, as you watch soldiers pour past and past the corner and over the canal towards the watched Rhine. Separate each plump little pregnant crescent. If you find the Kiss, the secret section, save it for Al.

Listen to the chambermaid thumping up the pillows, and murmur encouragement to her thick Alsatian tales ofl’intérieure. That is Paris, the interior, Paris or anywhere west of Strasbourg or maybe the Vosges. While she mutters of seduction and French bicyclists who ride more than wheels, tear delicately from the soft pile of sections each velvet string. You know those white pulpy strings that hold tangerines into their skins? Tear them off. Be careful.

Take yesterday’s paper (when we were in Strasbourg L’Ami du Peuple was best, because when it got hot the ink stayed on it) and spread it on top of the radiator. The maid has gone, of course – it might be hard to ignore her belligerent Alsatian glare of astonishment.

After you have put the pieces of tangerine on the paper on the hot radiator, it is best to forget about them. Al comes home, you go to a long noon dinner in the brown dining-room, afterwards maybe you have a little nip of quetsch from the bottle on the armoire. Finally he goes. You are sorry, but –

On the radiator the sections of tangerines have grown even plumper, hot and full. You carry them to the window, pull it open, and leave them for a few minutes on the packed snow of the sill. They are ready.

All afternoon you can sit, then, looking down on the corner. Afternoon papers are delivered to the kiosk. Children come home from school just as three lovely whores mince smartly into the pension’s chic tearoom. A basketful of Dutch tulips stations itself by the tram-stop, ready to tempt tired clerks at six o’clock. Finally the soldiers stump back from the Rhine. It is dark.

The sections of the tangerine are gone, and I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell.

– M.F.K. Fisher

Raspberry Tangerine Jam

We often used frozen raspberries in the bakery, especially when they are going to be cooked down to make puree. They still have a lot of flavour. The first time I made this I used the whole peel but because of all the pectin in it, the results were quite stiff. Just use half, put the other half on the radiator.

makes 1 large or 2 small jars

400g frozen raspberries

1 tangerine,  preferably seedless

250g jam sugar

Sterilise your jars. (Since I don’t have a dishwasher, I fill them with boiling water.) Put some spoons in the freezer for testing.

It is a small quantity of jam, so it can be made either on the stove or in a microwave. If you try the latter, keep an eye on it as it sets quickly. Heat the raspberries gently to defrost. Blend half the tangerine peel and all of the pulp (remove seeds first) with a spoonful of the sugar to make a puree.

When the raspberries have softened and started to liquefy, add the tangerine puree and the rest of the sugar. Bring to the boil and let it bubble for about 5 minutes. The bubbles should sound a tone deeper, the mixture more syrupy than before. When you drag the wooden spoon across the bottom, it should take a second for the liquid red sea to come back together. If in doubt, test the consistency on a frozen spoon: when the jam is at room temperature it should hold its shape instead of sliding quickly over the spoon, it should form a slight skin that will wrinkle slightly when you push it. You will see the jam sticking around the edges of the pan and on the wooden spoon too.* Carefully pour into jars, to the brim, close and turn upside down to cool.

*Plagiarising self from last post about jam.

time for jam

On holidays, you have time to paint your nails, to carefully stroke on three coats of coloured varnish. You can pick your jewel colours and then change them in three days if the whirlwind of meals-books-pool becomes too dull. At work, you are absolutely not allowed nail varnish for how quickly it would chip and fall into the cake mixture. (At home, that is your own lookout!) The times you forget, you have to wear those horrid latex gloves.

On holidays though you have time for frivolities. Like the time we woke up and decided to learn to make jam. My mother said it was easy, as long as you only make a kilo of fruit’s worth at a time. Then you are not stuck stirring at a hot stove for ages, and the fruit doesn’t boil away all of its flavour. Again, not like at work where we had 13 kilos of fruits rouges and a plastic tub of pectin. At home we had some leftover frozen raspberries from coulis for peach melba and best of all a packet of jam sugar – ‘Confisquew’ as my mother calls it. The pectin is already incorporated, so after only five minutes boiling the jam will set like a dream.

Sterilise your jars in the dishwasher or in boiling water. Put a little saucer in the freezer. In a large heavy-bottomed pan you heat your raspberries with half a cup of water until they turn into soup. When it bubbles you add 700g jam sugar (Confisuc)  and bring to the boil. When bubbling and rising up like a angry sea, a ‘rolling boil,’ you time five minutes. At this point you maybe have time to apply nail varnish to one hand. Give the angrily boiling liquid a stir every now and then, in case it sticks. After five minutes, observe your jam carefully. The bubbles should sound a tone deeper, the mixture more syrupy than before. When you drag the wooden spoon across the bottom, it should take a second for the liquid red sea to come back together. If in doubt, test a drop on the cold saucer. When the jam is at room temperature it should hold its shape instead of sliding quickly over the saucer, it should form a slight skin that will wrinkle slightly when you push it. You will see the jam sticking around the edges of the pan and on the wooden spoon too.

When you are pretty sure the jam has jammed, turn off the heat. You will see the bubbles subside, leaving a slight white-ish froth. You can skim it off “if you want to win prizes at the WI” says mother, or strangely enough you can add 10g butter and watch it dissolve the scum.

Wait for 15 minutes. Finish painting your nails. When they are nearly dry but not quite set, you can run them under cold water. Now pay attention to the jam again. Fill the jars right to the brim with the hot jam, screw the lid on tightly and turn the jars upside down to form a vacuum.  (If you have some extra, pour into a little dish and put in the fridge for a snack later.) Leave to cool.

Our 700g raspberries made one small and two medium jars of the brightest jam. We couldn’t stop marvelling at the colour, at all the seeds suspended. It really did look like jam! Total cooking time – no more than half an hour. So we made plum jam too, fom our mirabelle tree. Mirabelles are small yellow plums not much bigger than cherries. We had a kilo, stoned with the cherry pipper. We left them to turn into soup with a cup of water. (Faster in a pressure cooker.) When the mirabelles break down into soft pulp, repeat the process. Sugar, boil, test, jar. Plums already have pectin in them, so we had a slightly thicker texture, of beautiful deep yellow-ochre, a hue just below apricot. It was sweet and bright and simple.

The kitchen had a crowd of upside-down jars, provisions for autumn. We had to clean a few stubborn pink spots off the cooker, and close the lid for the year. We locked the shutters and swept the floors. The sky was already grey, the wind already turned chill.

Back in Paris now, heralded by drops of rain, the summer jam – on croissants or rice cakes or porridge – bolsters me against the day ahead. And fills me with an immense satisfaction, akin to the patisserie I had abandoned over the summer. I learned something, and I made something, tangible, colourful and delicious.

I have been to my Crimée market twice now, once for apricots and once for figs. I am plotting limpid clear jams replete with over-large chunks of fruit, to line up on my kitchen counter. My nails are dark red and gold.