When we got to Paris, the markets were so full of strawberries that vendors were using scoops to bundle them into bags. Maybe it was because the scent made me dizzy, maybe it was because I’m such a sucker for ripe fruit, who knows, but I bought a full flat of berries and, of course, Michael and I couldn’t polish them off before they started to show signs of going soft. And so, I made jam. A micro batch. Without a recipe
Jammin’
Here’s kind of what I did: I put the berries in a saucepan (I halved or quartered the large ones, of which there weren’t that many) — I think I had about 2 cups — added a splash of water (really just a couple of teaspoons) and put the pan over medium heat. When the water boiled, I turned down the heat, and as the fruit collapsed and the mix got juicy, I stood by and stirred, adjusting the heat to keep things simmering softly. I added a little sugar and cooked it in. When the mixture was still a pretty red and looked a little looser than I’d want jam to be (less than 10 minutes – sadly, I didn’t count), I tasted it for sugar and decided to cook in a bit more and to add a squirt of lemon juice. Then, I pulled it off the heat, scraped it into a clean jar and capped the jar. As soon as the jar was cool enough to handle comfortably, I popped it into the fridge — this wasn’t the kind of jam meant to be kept in a cupboard or for a long time. Of course, with so much good bread in the house, it was never going to last anyway. Now that I’m back in Connecticut, I’ve used the same technique (too fancy a word for what I did) for blueberry jam and for blueberry-peach jam. xo Dorie
