jammin', with fudge

After a long hiatus I made some araza jam this morning. There's a small season starting and I was able to pick 2/3rds of a bucket of fruit to make 11 jars of what has become our signature jam. I also found just enough nutmeg to make two jars of nutmeg butter. What incredible smells filled the kitchen! Especially as we were also slicing ginger and processing black pepper.

I've been trying to make fudge these last two days. Back in the US, my class would make and sell fudge by the caseload for Christmas fairs. We could knock out fudge like no-one else and had all the packaging and presentation - and sales talk - down to a tee. But this is the first time I've tried it in three years and the recipes from up north don't work so well due to temperature and humidity differences, plus the farmer won't eat butter (!). And there's the caveat that everything we offer at the farmers' market comes from the farm. So. Here's my new recipe:

Coconut Chocolate Fudge
one serving (enough for 4 people after dinner treat)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup coconut oil
2/3 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup powdered cacao
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Melt oil, milk and sugar together in heavy bottomed pan, bring to boil and boil until it reaches the soft ball stage. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Wait for 5 minutes then stir in powdered cacao. Wait 5 more minutes then beat until mixture loses its glossiness. Pour into silicon mold (or onto greased parchment paper). Allow to cool before eating (if possible). The cacao and coconut milk comes from the farm, the oil came from Bastimentos Island, the vanilla from Mexico (but soon from our farm) and the sugar from the store. No photos, we ate it before I had the chance to bring out the camera.

three burners, three pots, three jams . . . oh my!

Today was a jam day. A lovely, bubbling, boiling, sugary, syrupy, fruity day. With a massage at the end (thanks Maria!).

I have a three burner gas stove in the kitchen. I love this stove, it has a black glass top, automatic ignition and there's space around the burners for all sorts of spoons, spatulas, jar lids and measuring/pouring devices. It's wonderfully easy to clean and looks good.

Today, as most days, it was busy. I had jam orders to fill and just about enough fruit to do it. We have a client who wants to sell our products in a health food store in San Jose, she wants a sample jar of every jam we make. I've explained to her a couple of times that our jams are seasonal - I use what's on the trees until there's no more left, and then I use what's coming into fruit next, and on it goes. She understands what I say, but the gap between understanding and understanding can be large at times - especially when we live in a world where everything is always available (so it seems even for those in Costa Rica). Seasonal is an empty word for most of us.

But that's the beauty of my work - I can never get bored of making the same thing - two months or less and that fruit I thought I'd always have is gone and something new has to be created for what's up next.

Having said that, there are fruits which have seasons throughout the year - and these were the ones I concentrated on today. Taking the beagle, I set off looking for nutmegs. The main harvest comes in the spring, but most of the time one can find 2 or 3 or 5 or 6 ready and open. Today I found 5 - just enough for 2 pots of jam.

Next we headed to the araza - a tiny gathering of 12 fruit, enough for about 4 pots. We had more luck with the cas, but the season is winding down after 2 glorious months.


By the kitchen I picked up half a box of mangosteen, and a couple of limes. The mangosteen has maybe another 3 weeks to go, I'll be sorry to see it go, for a whole year too.

Back in the kitchen I peeled, chopped and simmered the nutmegs while I opened the mangosteen and slipped the seedless segments into the blender. The seeded segments have to be squeezed - the seeds add too strong a flavour to the jam. I blended the mangosteen pulp and began to cook it down in a pot while I pureed the nutmegs. The araza had to be washed, halved and the seeds and goop scooped (think overripe pumpkin), then chopped, put in a pot and cooked down also. Then came the adding of sugar - white cane sugar for the mangosteen and araza, and raw brown cane sugar for the nutmeg. Grate some more nutmeg and sprinkle some cinnamon into the nutmeg butter, add lime juice to the mangosteen, and try to stir three pots simultaneously while telling the beagle he had better not chew my baskets for the market. Think about coffee and wish the farmer would appear and make some.

The nutmeg has a tendency to sputter and spit, but today no, thankfully. The mangosteen came out a beautiful pink, and has the best flavour so far (2 limes to 1/2 a box of mangosteen, about 3 handfuls of sugar). The araza behaved impeccably as usual and set up first. And the cas? Well that was scooped, strained and is sitting in the fridge waiting to become fruit leather tomorrow. After all I had my massage to go to.

Today in the kitchen

It's Friday which means baking for the market. I have some araza (yes, it's back again!), some ginger and some very strong lime marmalade which needs to be transformed. This will probably mean that the oven will be busy with ginger araza cookies and a marmalade cake. The ginger araza cookies are a favourite at the market and very easy to make.

The brilliant thing with all these self concocted recipes is that they are infinitely adaptable. I use the same basic recipe for all sorts of different fruits and spices. However the araza / ginger combo is the most popular. I think it's because of the acidity of the araza, the gentle heat of the ginger and the sweetness of the cookie. With no araza I would substitute something like rhubarb, sour plum or cherry.

Araza Ginger Cookies

1/2 cup oil
1 egg
1 cup ginger sugar (the sugar and ginger pieces left over after making crystallized ginger (recipe on this blog). Substitute plain brown sugar, white sugar, sugar spiced by adding dried ginger, cinnamon, vanilla pods, orange peel . . . imagine)
2 cups wholewheat flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 to 1 cup fruit (with araza (acidic fruits) I cook first with sugar as though I were making jam, just enough to soften, with non acidic fruits, like apples, I cook a little to soften)

Beat oil, egg and sugar. Add dry ingredients, mix in fruit. Bake at 350F for 15-20 minutes. Enjoy.

Making Jam! or Araza Frenzy!

It seems I'm making so much jam these days, that I thought I'd take some pictures of the process. Right now I'm making Araza or Araza and Guayabilla jam.

The stall yesterday seemed a tribute to Araza: we had fresh fruit for sale; jam; fruit leathers; fruit mixes; I used it as a wrapping for my new dried fruit experiment, and I had araza cookies too. This is what I want, to use what we have in season, in as many ways possible to reap as much as we can from the abundance offered. I'm making araza vinegar and today I'll start araza wine. Oh and I have araza sorbet in the freezer.

The Araza (Eugenia stipitata) is in the guava family. It's a short tree, no more than 10 foot high and is basically round with a tendency to sprawl. It's an Amazonian native and is a heavy producer. When the cacao harvest failed in this region (due to blight), araza was brought in as a replacement crop. However there is not so much of a market for the fruit: while it looks delightful and smells divine, it is very soft and damages easily (ripe fruit can often split falling from the tree), and it is incredibly acidic. The acid content of the fruit measures at a pH of 2.4, and the sugar content is a very low 1.4% (apples are 15%, limes are 1.1%). An araza has more than twice as much Vitamin C as an orange. An hectare (2.2 acres) of araza will produce 20 - 30 tonnes of fruit a year. We have a lot of Araza, maybe 80 trees. Hence the need for jam.

Step 1
Clean fruit and remove inner flesh and seeds. Cut into smallish chunks, about 1 inch long by 1/2 inch wide. Measure by weight or by volume. Place in pot. Araza is a very juicy fruit and doesn't need water added. It does need sugar. I use 60% sugar by weight, for example I use 5 lbs of fruit and 3 lbs of sugar. Put on stove and heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Bring to a nice low boil.



Step 2
Araza, and many other fruits, will produce a foamy froth in the initial stage of the cooking process. This froth will discolour the finished jam and I always remove it with a spoon. But keep it! It is excellent in cookies or for baking and one can make sorbet with it. Put the froth in a glass and when it cools a little some juice will settle to the bottom, pour this back into the jam.





Step 3
At some point, perhaps 15 minutes after you begin, the froth will stop and the texture of the jam will change. The boil will not be so asctive as the mixture begins to thicken. The characteristic plop plip sound of bubbling jam will be heard. The colour will begin to deepen too. Turn the heat down, and stir more frequently. Certainly not a time to go out into the garden to water the tomatoes. After 7 minutes or so, begin to test the jam on a metal spoon. You are looking for a skin to form on the surface.



Keep testing. Soon - though this takes a little experience, you will see just the point of readiness: the jam is thicker and when you move the spoon or ladle slowly through it, the ladle will push the jam ahead of it out of the way rather than simply moving through the liquid. Or as you move the jam you will be able, for an instant, to see the bottom of the pot behind the ladle.



If the jam on the ladle is forming even the slightest of skins, turn off the heat and wait for a minute or two: a skin should form on the surface of the pot:



The jam is now ready and can be ladled into freshly boiled (for 10 minutes)jars. Fill to within a half inch of the top, carefully clean the rim and outside edge of the jar, screw on the freshly boiled jar lid and set aside.