A glut of fruit always produces a crisis, especially for those of the ‘waste not, want not’ school of home management. Composting excess fruit, or allowing the sheep to eat themselves sick on it, seems like a cop-out, like ducking responsibility towards a demanding gift.
Last weekend five cageots – lightweight wooden cases – of ripe apricots from Provence arrived at La Chaise. Five kilos of fruit per cageot. It was a collective order gone wrong; some people did not follow through on their orders. A few rotten fruits in each box rapidly contaminated the others.
The theory was that the fruits, picked at near maturity, had suffered from being transported in a refrigerated van and then put in store during one of the Dordogne’s erratic heat-waves.
Delicious macerating in best Victoria ironstone wash bowl
Emergency jam making was the order of the day. No time to shop for new jam-jars, extra sugar or sugar with extra pectin added. Fortunately I have just acquired a new jam making bible – from the ‘Jam Museum’ , Museu de la Confitura’.* A major virtue of its recipes is that only half the usual amount of sugar suggested by English language cook-books, is considered necessary. So per kilo of apricots I only need half a kilo of sugar.
The apricot jam nestles happily with Spanish marmalade and French terrine
I halved the small fruits and macerated them overnight. By breakfast time the sugar was all dissolved and the fruits looked almost transparent. A little slow cooking to make sure the sugar entered the fruit, then the zest and juice of one lemon, a brief but fast boil – and it was done. Four pots of assorted sizes, sealed with white paraffin wax and a random selection of lids – job done.
And a mind left free to speculate on one of its favourite theories: that transport is the root of all economic evil.
* www.museudelaconfitura
17123 Torrente
Girona
Spain