I have been a little busy in the kitchen, which is a new thing to me. Usually I'm knitting or sewing but lately I have been more interested in clanging things around in the kitchen. It's all Pinterest's fault, trust me. My first unusual venture was Banana Jam, for which I used this recipe. I won't lie, I was attracted to it because of how simple it looked and although I don't have a water bath canner, I know how to make my own after years of watching my grandparents making mass batches of passata with their tomatoes and cooking them in a huge water bath. I gave the jam a little taste before jarring it and it was VERY sweet. I think this is because the bananas I used were too over ripe so next time, I'll either use less ripe bananas or less sugar! I'm also thinking of using brown sugar instead of white to get a more caramelly flavour, I think that would work nicely. That was the only taste I got of the jam, so perhaps after cooking it in the water bath it lost some of the sweetness; I doubt that somehow.
I made the banana jam to give to my boyfriend for our two year anniversary, but he guessed what it was because he played the dreaded guessing game and I'm awful at hiding things from him. So I decided to make him something else; bacon jam. I used this recipe because I thought using a slow cooker may have been an easy way to do this. I was somewhat wrong. What I didn't realise is that to do this, you have to cook the bacon jam for 4 hours, on low, with the lid off, which as you can imagine, totally stank the house out. So next time, I'll cook the jam in a heavy bottomed pan for less time and add water every half hour or so, so it doesn't dry up. Apart from that, great recipe and the jam went down very well; he decided to take it to his band's recording session and the jar is now almost empty...I'd better get making some more!
Finally (apart from the pickled eggs, which were super straight forward), I made some chilli jam. It took me a while to find a recipe I liked; in the end I went for this one. It's a great recipe and is really easy to adjust the amounts. The chillis I used were from my nan's greenhouse, and these have a reputation for being super-blow-your-face-off-hot, so I added a bell pepper to the mix to try and take the heat down a notch. Wow. The result still blew my head off! The jam came out really well, the pectin in the lemons helped it set (which amazed me a little...easily pleased) so it's spreadable without slopping all over the place (quite unlike the very runny banana jam). Good news is my dad and brother like it (or should I say, can handle it) so it won't go to waste! I think I can just about eat it, in very small quantities...am very much looking forward to having it in a burger (it has a bit of a relish twang due to the vinegar).
That's it for now, hopefully this is the first and last catch up I have to do!
M
