by Pam Corbin
for my daughters
Pip and Maddy
Contents
Seasonality
The Rules
Jams & Jellies
Pickles, Chutneys & Relishes
Cordials, Fruit Liqueurs & Vinegars
Bottled Fruits
Sauces, Ketchups & Oil-based Preserves
Useful Things
I love jam and all its jarred and bottled relatives, the extended family we call by the rather austere name ‘preserves’. Actually they’re not austere at all. They are warm, forward and friendly, offering up both generous feisty flavours and intriguing spicy subtleties to all who embrace them.
Mostly, I love them for being so delicious. But I also cherish and admire them for something else. They epitomise the values at the heart of a well-run, contented kitchen. Firstly they embody and thrive on seasonal abundance. Secondly they are, or should be, intrinsically local, perfectly complementing the grow-your-own (or at least pick-your-own) philosophy. And thirdly, not to be sniffed at in these days of ecological anxiety, they are frugal, thrifty and parsimonious: they waste not, so we want not.
Jams, chutneys and pickles embrace the seasons, but they also, in an elegant and entirely positive manner, defy them. They do so by stretching the bounty of more abundant months into the sparser ones. We shouldn’t underestimate this achievement. Over the centuries, wizards and alchemists have used all the power and magic they can muster to try and catch rainbows, spin straw into gold, and even bring the dead back to life. They’ve failed of course. Yet all the while, humble peasants and ordinary housewives have got on with the simple business of bottling sunshine, so that it may spread a little joy in the leaner seasons ... They call it jam.
More prosaically, I love the way that a couple of hours in the kitchen transforms a gardener’s problem into a cook’s delight. Come August and September, when it starts raining plums and you are wading through thigh-sized marrows, your conscience would be rightly pricked if you threw such bounty on the compost heap. But when you know how to bottle your own fruit and vegetables, a glut of apples or a pile of pears becomes an exciting opportunity rather than a headache.
Yet I know many keen cooks, even some gardener cooks, who never make preserves. They love eating them, they love receiving them as gifts, they love the idea of making them, but something is holding them back. What is it? A fear, perhaps, of the perceived paraphernalia of jam-making, a mild hysteria about the dangers of boiling sugar, a rumbling anxiety about the setting point. I know that such worries are unfounded, delusional even. So what can I do for these poor souls?
Well, I can introduce them to Pam Corbin. I first heard about ‘Pam the Jam’ when she was running Thursday Cottage Preserves, a small commercial jam company which operated in an almost domestic way, making old-fashioned preserves the old-fashioned way, with real ingredients. When we started planning our Preserving Days at River Cottage, I knew Pam was the person for the job. She shares her passion and wealth of knowledge with enviable clarity and enthusiasm. Many of her sentences end with, ‘It’s simple, really,’ and with Pam to guide you, you really believe it is.
As this book has come together, my admiration for Pam has deepened. She is a great communicator who bestows infectious confidence on her charges. But more than that, she is a woman of decisive palate and impeccable good taste. Throughout the growing year that it took to produce this book, I was the lucky recipient of regular ‘jamograms’ – little parcels of tasting pots of recipes that she was developing for the book.
From her Early rhubarb jam to Roasted sweet beet relish, Bramley lemon curd to Roasted tomato ketchup, they were invariably exquisite. Your ambitions may be as modest as a few jars of perfect strawberry jam, but under Pam’s guidance I’m quite confident that you will soon be dabbling with Blackberry and apple leather, Nasturtium ‘capers’, Figgy mostardo and Elixir of sage. Just writing their names makes me hungry.
Sadly there wasn’t room for all of Pam’s fabulous recipes in this book. But it is a tribute to her remarkable gifts that every time we decided to leave one out it felt like a minor tragedy. The upside is that every recipe that’s in here is a tried and trusted gem. They met with universal approval from the River Cottage tasting panel – not a formal body, you understand, but a dangerous scrummage of whoever was around when Pam dropped by with a few more jars or bottles.
Pam’s approach is not didactic, but encouraging and adventurous. Her message is that, once you’ve mastered a few basic techniques, there’s really no stopping you. In this inspiring book she will show you the ropes and then give you the reins. I’m absolutely sure you will enjoy the ride.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Dorset, May 2008
Preserving the bounties of our fruitful summer and autumn was normal – a way of life – not so many years ago. It was essential to stock up the larder for leaner months, when fresh food was scarce or unavailable and the sealed bottles and jars full of ‘summer’ would help to allay the monotony of the winter diet. If soft summer currants and berries – and gluts of sweet-smelling tomatoes and trugs of veg – weren’t kept in some form or another, then there would be no summer produce until the following year. There was no nipping down to the supermarket to buy, in the midst of January, a punnet of strawberries or even a bag of tomatoes.
You don’t need to turn the clock back far, just a couple of generations to the 1950s, when to own a home refrigerator or a freezer was considered opulent, and of course fresh foods didn’t arrive each day of the week, each week of the year by air and sea from all corners of the globe to flood shop shelves with produce that would otherwise be considered out of season.
The rationing of food during wartime Britain finally finished in July 1954, nine years after the war had ended. The war years had seen the government allocating sugar to the Women’s Institute for jam-making so that surplus produce did not go to waste. The extent of food preservation by the WI did not stop at jam-making; these resolute ladies also canned fruit and vegetables for the national food supply. The end to those long years of rationing coincided with an increase in the variety of imported foods readily available throughout the year. Unquestionably, for many, this has meant the structure and meaningful importance of working and living the seasons, along with the necessity to preserve and not waste, have vanished from everyday life.
Following the seasons
Food is never more flavoursome nor as good as when it is fresh and in season, making the riches of a good harvest a just reward for anybody who is prepared to take notice of and be guided by the seasons. For me, there’s not much to better a freshly dug new potato cooked up with a sprig of garden mint, and how these earthy roots can be thought of as humble is inexplicable as they are a staple food worldwide. If stored correctly (dark and between 5 and 10°C), their firm and starchy bodies will keep naturally for months without any further action to preserve them.
Or, what could surpass devouring a plateful of freshly picked raspberries? These soft juicy berries, however, will keep for barely a day or two before they begin to deteriorate, so action needs to be speedy to preserve them at their best. Raspberries are a wonderfully useful preserving ingredient, for they can be transformed into blissful jam, bottled, turned into berry cordial or used to make fruity vinegar, all to be put away and enjoyed later in the year.
By the very nature of the variable climate linked with each of the four seasons, much of Britain’s home-grown produce is available for limited periods, sometimes just a few swift weeks of the year, when crops of gluttish proportion are available to feast upon fresh, and any surplus will be at its best preserved in some way or another. Ideally, produce to be preserved should be as fresh and local as possible, so every tasty scrap of its character is unmistakably captured. However, there are a few
exceptions to the local rule, and until we see citrus groves swathing the land, the long-standing tradition of making marmalade to preserve the bitter Seville orange will continue, in addition to the use of tart, acidic lemon in all number of preserving and culinary recipes.
The familiarity of the pattern of the seasons and what each offers is fundamental to understanding how the preserving year is entwined with the growing seasons. The seasonal performance is undoubtedly the greatest show on earth: a perennial show in four parts running for 365 days of the year with every month taking a worthy and significant role, where complementary ingredients ‘brush shoulders’ at their growing time. You’ll find elderflowers add muscat perfume to gooseberries, pectin-rich redcurrants combine with low-pectin strawberries, and soft fleshy apples will partner seedy blackberries perfectly at autumn time.
The long slender stalks of rhubarb bridge the beginning and the end of each yearly cycle, starting around the time of the spring equinox, when the sun makes the first of its biannual crossings over the equator and the length of day and night are more or less equal. It is now that the first crinkled, sulphur-yellow rhubarb leaves begin to push their way up from the sleepy earth, unfurling to spread their towering umbrella leaves over silken red-green shoots. From here on, and until the quiescence of sleeping winter, there is usually something budding up and getting ready to yield some form of crop for us to harvest, so a sharp eye needs to be employed to avoid missing any of the seasonal gifts each month offers.
Spring
The spring months of April and May are the wake-up time, heralding the burst of new growth from latent pinky-tinged buds and shoots that rapidly change into blossom or velvety spring-green leaves. The feathery soft green foliage of the native beech begins to spill out from hedgerows in late April and early May, just ahead of the elderflowers who run riot in a showy-off way just about everywhere later in the month. Patches of nettles and wild garlic appear on sheltered banks, the tender young leaves just right to be turned into zesty pesto. Protected pockets of land will allow the first tiny green gooseberries of the season to be picked and, like the long red-green rhubarb stalks, these berries are sharp and tart too, almost as if it is nature’s way of arousing our dulled taste buds, stimulating and preparing them for the rush of flavours to come. In preserving terms, these two months are still quite a lazy time, a teaser for the months ahead, but they are by no means idle. Use this time to check out your preserving gear (jars, bottles, lids and things) as well as making sure your stocks of sugar, spices and vinegar are plentiful for when the real season kicks off.
Summer
In June we encounter the summer solstice when the daylight hours are at their maximum and the increasing warmth gives rise to a frenzy of growing in all shapes and colours. We see the start of the soft fruit season with strings of shimmering redcurrants and the early varieties of strawberries and raspberries producing their first sweet berries. Aromatic herbs make themselves known and their heady, sweet-smelling leaves can be used to augment vinegars and oils, and to flavour pesto and relishes. The hedgerow shyly reveals diminutive silver-grey bramble buds, whilst the petals of Rosa canina (dog rose) can be gathered to add fragrance to jams, jellies, cordials and spirits. Down in the vegetable garden the first fattening roots of sweet beetroot and the swollen heads of Florence fennel will be beginning to show.
July is the month when the wooden spoon begins to get busy. The early soft fruit berries and currants of June extend to welcome maincrop varieties along with other currant and berry friends; blackcurrants, blueberries, tayberries and loganberries crop plentifully and gooseberries reach sweet maturity to end their productive reign. The silver-grey bramble buds of June break into pink-tinged white flowers, soon to metamorphose into the unmistakable drupelets of indigenous blackberries. Look closely at the elder bush and you’ll see a mass of green under-ripe berries, which before long will glisten red-black as they ripen. Hips and haws are like hedgerow chameleons, disguised in their leafy green coats before they first tinge bronze and then blush red for their autumnal show. Cherries, the first of the stone fruits, will be ready, but be quick – they won’t last long, and eagle-eyed birds will be waiting to gorge upon them. Greengages and plums are beginning to swell, but it won’t be until late in the month or the beginning of August that the early varieties of these orchard fruits will be ready.
August is the true glut month when green beans, courgettes, tomatoes, cucumbers and summer veg invariably oversupply, resulting in a glorious month to preserve as much as possible. The summer-fruiting raspberries are soon replaced by the first flush of blackberries – always the sweetest and juiciest of the year. Watch out for hanging clusters of scarlet rowans, the berries of the mountain ash, for these, combined with a handful of crab apples, will make an outstanding jelly of carnelian colour.
Autumn
In September, you’ll find your back step will become a home for refugee fruit, stuffed into bags and left by well-meaning friends who expect you to make all sorts of magnificent jams, jellies and other preserves. Trying to make sure all is safely gathered before the cooler and shorter days of autumn set in, this month might seem a race against time. But don’t panic, you’ll find marrows, onions, apples, pears and others have developed protective winter coats and, if carefully stored, will keep for a month or two, to use later in the year.
Orchard fruits will now be ripening. Plums, apples and pears yield freely, ahead of the fragrant quince ready at the tail end of the month – watch out though, for too much moisture will make these golden beauties split. For wild food foragers, hedgerows are ablaze with colour, intense with berries and fruits of all kinds; blackberries, rosehips, haws, elders, blue-bloomed sloes, scabby crabs (apples) and clusters of hazelnuts adorn native trees and bushes.
From here on, things really do begin to slow up. Much of the autumn harvest will be past its best. The woodland birds will have feasted well upon the hedgerow spread, although bitter sloes still clinging to thorny branches are for the taking, to imbue fruit liqueurs with their tartness. Apples and pears are still plentiful to turn into Christmas mincemeat or spicy chutney, and onions pickled now will be just right for the festive season. Sweet chestnuts, split from spiky armour, can be found in heaps of fallen leaves, while raspberries, of the autumn kind, stretch berry-picking to this time.
Winter
As the year spins towards the winter solstice, the shorter, darkening days and the lack of sunlight hours allow the earth to rest from growing. The dormancy of the winter begins and only hardy leeks, blue-green brassicas and a few rooty crops survive the cold. But still, within the cycle of the seasonal preserving year, there are two highlights yet to come. The bitter marmalade oranges from Seville arrive in early January, turning this month into a preserving stronghold of the year, when steamy citrus vapours fill our kitchens, and larder shelves are replenished with jars of golden, amber and tawny marmalade to last the year ahead.
Then finally, early rhubarb arrives to carry us through to the next perennial cycle. From late January to early March in darkened sheds and under tall forcing pots, the leaves force upwards to boast the beauty of their slender, translucent pink stalks, heralding the start of another seasonal year.
Seasonal availability
The chart overleaf gives an indication as to when seasonal produce is available. Inevitably though, it can vary by up to 4 weeks depending on how far south or north you live, or if you live in a frost pocket, exposed to cold winds, or a warm, sunny sheltered site. I’ve not included any indoor-grown crops (with the exception of forced early rhubarb) that rely on indoor heat for their growing cycle.
Fruit-growing regions in Britain
With an agreeable, temperate climate and a patchwork of differing soils, Britain bestows an abundance of fruit from all corners of the land. From the rich loamy lowland of the eastern counties to the verdant pastures of the West Country, the good earth not only gives crops the food and energy needed to sustain growth, but it also instils characte
r in the fruit it bears. In turn, regions become strongly associated with their produce. Somerset is indelibly linked with cider apples, for example, while the fruit orchards of Kent give it the title ‘garden of England’.
Some of these areas are mere pockets of land covering as little as a few hectares, like the rambling orchards along the river Fal in Cornwall, where the tart ‘Kea’ plum survives the salt-laden southwesterlies. Other larger regions embrace neighbouring counties, forming well-known commercial growing areas. The drier, colder eastern terrain, for example, is home to many British-grown strawberries, with names such as ‘Early Cambridge’, ‘Cambridge Favourite’ and ‘Cambridge Vigour’ sealing their origins. Grown too in this region is the unique and intensely flavoured darling ‘Little Scarlet’ strawberry, used for over a century by Essex jam-makers Wilkin & Sons. As many as seventy of these tiny sweet strawberries are packed into a jar of their highly acclaimed jam.
In western terrains you will find a network of ancient and established orchards crisscrossing and bordering pasture land. This large area splits down into smaller regions, which offer different varieties that assume native rights to the soil and climate they inhabit. Bittersweet, sharp and sweet, juicy apples for cider-making predominate the Devonshire and Somerset orchards, whereas the Vale of Evesham in southern Worcestershire is famed for the luscious plums, dessert apples and pears it bears. Here, in the wetter, warmer West, apples and pears put on their natural waxy waterproof coats to protect their fleshy fruit from the southwesterly precipitations.
Surprisingly, perhaps, despite the obvious contrast in climate, good commercial crops of soft berries and currants grow in both the North and South of the country. One noticeable difference is that ‘high bush’ members of the Vaccinium or blueberry family are cultivated in the safe and sheltered South, whereas ‘low bush’ relatives are those that are found growing wild on heath and moorland in the rather more vigorous climes of northern England and Scotland.