Strawberry Conserves

I imagine that the commercial jam market in France is very small. Even though it has a population of 61 million, and most of these 61 million Frenchies probably have jam on toast for their breakfast everyday.

Why do I imagine so? Because French grany and maman (French for grandmother and mother) make their own jams, jars and jars of them. And they do jam exchange within the family, grany to maman, and maman with aunts for variety of flavours. And the mamans will in turn distribute these lovingly made jams to their city dwelling children. So who needs to buy jam in this country? Especially when homemade jams come with deliciously chunky pieces of real fruits!

(Well, there is still a commercial jam market in France, and one popular brand is called "Bonne Maman", translated into Good Mother. This brand of jam contains chunky fruit pieces almost like mom's. It's sold in Singapore supermarkets too, and no surprise that we've tried almost all the flavours.)

When making jam, French mamans buy big quantities of fruits. You can trust them on knowing where to buy seasonal fruits cheaply in bulk. And they are usually too ripe to be eaten on its own but perfect for jam-making, which is why they are cheaper too.

Being well into the fruity season in New Zealand, we reckon it is time to try our hands in jam making. Especially after finding 1kg of strawberries selling cheap at the Sunday market.

Our jam recipe comes from, who else, but Rémi's maman. While we reproduce the trusty recipe she has been using here, we still have to check with her on how to improve. Our jam looks more like strawberry preserves -- very liquid, with whole strawberries floating in the thickened liquid. But it's perfect with plain yoghurt. To spread on toast, just smash the extremely soft strawberries over it.

A few words on sterilising the jam jars. Put clean jars into boiling water for 10 minutes. Let them drip dry. Then pour the hot jam into the jars, cover tightly immediately and invert right away. The steam from the hot jam is supposed to kill bacteria in the remaining pocket of air. And the expanding heated air will make the jar air tight. If you suspect that air has sneaked in, then store in fridge and use immediately. Otherwise, the preserved jam can keep for a long time in your store cupboard.

Strawberry Conserve/Jam

2 kg strawberry
1.5kg sugar
250ml water

Wash strawberries and carefully remove the stalk.

Put them in a large pan with water. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the sugar and stir to mix evenly and cook 25 minutes. When it's done, store into jam jars.

Some after thoughts:
1. Traditional recipes used by mamans are always amazingly brief in details. We may have missed out the obvious step, which is to cut the strawberries into chunky pieces first (can't really blame us, we had very small strawberries, and Rémi still insists that keeping strawberries whole are better).
2. Strawberries are known to not set well. So some recipes call for adding a spoon of pectin-rich fruit (raspberry, apple, black currant, gooseberry) jam into the conserve mixture to help the gelling)