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JAM: THE SHORT STORY Years ago, when I had more time, I used to make jam and chutney and fruit butter. I thought of it again at the beginning of this month, when I saw the baskets of peaches and plums lined up on my kitchen counter. I went to my bookshelf and pulled out a few old volumes I hadn't opened in years. Paging through them was like a visit with an old friend. I felt again all the old pull of "putting food by" - the idea of capturing the abundant harvest of late summer and early fall, the satisfying image of a cellar full of gleaming jars, the irresistable notion that you can unscrew one of those jars on a bleak winter day and taste the voluptuous flavor of summer. I used to love taking my time, going through the steps of a big canning project: the harvesting and sorting, the cleaning and preparing, maybe a first step of salting the vegetables for pickles or macerating fruit, then the simmering and skimming and pouring. Finally, the very rewarding moment when jars full of rich color and flavor were wiped off and the labels stuck on. When you do real canning, you give yourself over to the season, the rhythm of the job. "Putting Food By" (Ruth Hertzberg, Beatrice Vaughan and Janet Greene) is, in fact, the name of one of my favorite books from decades past. I learned a lot about canning and preserving from that book, I still have it, and it's still terrific, packed with information and a no-nonsense style. Most of it is devoted to technique, but there are some excellent recipes, including old fashioned bread and butter pickles made from zucchini, and a relish of rhubarb and onion that sounded awfully intriguing. I also wandered through Edna Lewis' incomparably evocative book, "The Taste of Country Cooking". Her description of making Green Tomato Preserves, "the preserves we liked to present when company came," is wonderful. It's a two day process, and she describes how the whole tomatoes become "quite transparent" as they simmer on the second day. Junior League cookbooks, the home-made, spiral bound ones from the forties and fifties, are also great for old preserving formulas. "Charleston Receipts" has had a good run; my copy is the 26th printing, from 1989. In it I found Palmetto Pickle, Ginger Pears, Sweet Pickled Figs, and Spiced Grapes. The instructions for this last one begin by telling us to remove and set aside the skins of eight pounds of grapes. Maybe next year. For now, I'm a proponent of the small batch, and of what I call refrigerator jam. Preserving need not be the daunting project we imagine or remember. It can be a project for an hour or two. The small batch is not about filling the cellar. It's the solution to a large basket of too-quickly ripening peaches, or a few too many plums all at once when the neighbors strip their tree. It's the answer to that extra flat of sweet strawberries that were irresistable at the farmers' market - and what a shame it would be to throw them out, or even to put them in the fridge. A small batch of jam or fruit butter can be made quickly, in an ordinary pot, and because you're not making such a lot you don't have to worry about long storage. That means no boiling water bath, no pressure processing. You just ladle your quick jam into a few clean jars and put them into the refrigerator. This is short-term jam - make it today, eat it starting tomorrow. Instead of thinking of extending the life of your harvest for a year or two, think of extending the bounty for a week or two. Of course you can process and seal jars if you want to - but you don't have to! When you think of it that way, stirring up a little batch of jam or an interesting relish becomes no more alarming than making a pot of soup. Fruit butters are the easiest. They are simply fruit that is pureed and cooked down with some sugar until it is as thick as you like it. Lemon juice and spices can be added for flavor, if you're in the mood. No pectin, no worries about setting up. Because you're working with a small amount and reducing the fruit by evaporation, the amount of sugar can be moderated to your taste. I like considerably less than what is called for in a standard recipe. A dessert sauce is a fruit butter that wasn't cooked as long, and a quick jam can be made this way too, with the fruit being left in pieces. Last week I made a lovely Italian Prune Jam, and all I did was wash the prune plums, halve and pit them, then put them in a stainless steel pot with some sugar and lemon juice and cooked them for about half an hour. Done. I also had a few too many peaches and nectarines. They were so ripe and sweet smelling that the perfume filled the room. I peeled them and cut them up, put them in a bowl with sugar, and when the juices were running I put them in a pot and slowly brought them to a boil. I cooked them gently for about eight minutes, then pureed everything in the blender. I returned the puree to the pot, and simmered it for a few more minutes with some lemon juice and a pinch of cinnamon. Several jars of this Peach and Nectarine Butter are in my refrigerator right now and it's going fast - I doubt it will last out the week. Both of these recipes can be found in this month's New Recipes, and you may want to use them as a rough guide, but don't be afraid to fill a pot with whatever fruit you have in overabundance, and experiment. The small batch is very forgiving. Because it's small you can only make a small mistake - and when you're dealing with summer fruit and some sugar, even the mistakes are likely to taste great.
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