RHUBARB RASPBERRY JAM
If I never ventured beyond my childhood food experiences I’d be proclaiming that rhubarb was horrible.
Every spring big fat reddish green stalks of it would come into the kitchen, be chopped to pieces and thrown in a pot of boiling water and sugar until it turned to stringy mush. This stew would be served for dessert for weeks. Bowl after bowl of pretty pinkish-liquid with blobby bits– every mouthful holding an astringency so powerful I swear I felt my tooth enamel dissolving.
It grew in almost every Maritime garden and if I could I would have ripped it out of every one.
Luckily, I grew up in a time and place where adults ignored children’s opinions on food.
It’s still astringent. All that oxalic acid doesn’t go anywhere just because you throw a bag of sugar at it. But if it’s given a chance to work with other ingredients, it becomes downright delicious.
Almost every Canadian has had a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie and strawberry rhubarb jam is as much a staple of community bake sales as the ubiquitous lemon loaf. Since the two growing seasons overlap it’s an easy and agreeable flavour combination. But I wanted something a little less predictable.
Perhaps it was the lateness of Spring weather this year, or the less than impressive rhubarb crop that spurred me to look around for inspiration a few weeks ago. I knew I had a bag of rhubarb in the freezer from last year’s crop that I’d forgotten to use during the winter. When I went to retrieve it, I noticed the bag of frozen raspberries next to it. Simple as that.
Rhuby Razz Jam.
Yes the name is kitschy cute, but I was desperate to put some life into an April and May that were unrelentingly wet and grey.
This jam is delicious on toast and a star in Linzer Cookies and Bakewell tarts. It is bright, jewel-toned heaps of tart sweet zing. Hello Spring!
Ingredients
2 cups rhubarb (fresh or frozen)
2 cups raspberries (fresh or frozen)
3 ¾ cups white sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
Zest of one lemon
Method
While you can use either fresh or frozen fruit, you’re better off letting the fruit macerate with the sugar for at least an hour if you’re using frozen. Macerate in this case just means stirring the sugar into a large bowl of all the fruit and letting it sit until the fruit starts to soften, the sugar starts to melt and liquids start pooling at the bottom of the bowl. Thirty minutes should be enough if you’re working with fresh ingredients.
When you’re ready to transfer the fruit to a jam pan or a big 5-quart flat-bottomed stainless steel pot, stir in the lemon juice and zest.
Put a ceramic plate in your freezer for conducting a wrinkle test later.
Bring the rhubarb/raspberry mixture to a hard boil. Boil until set. Approx 10 minutes.
You can use a sugar thermometer to test for the set ( 220°F). You can hold your spoon sideways above the pot and look to see how the liquid runs off it—look for ripples or curtains of liquid. Or you can do what I and millions of other home cooks do.
Take the pot off the heat. Grab another spoon and gather up a small dollop and plunk it onto that plate in the freezer. Put it back in the freezer and wait 30 seconds. Take out the plate and push the jam with your finger. Is it the consistency you want? No?
Return the pot of rhubarb/raspberry to the heat and boil another two minutes. Test again. Repeat until it is the consistency you want.
Remove from heat and pour into sterilized jars. Give them a 10 minute water bath.
Yields 6 250ml jars
