Music and Cats

At the farmers market Sunday morning, my favorite tomato stand had lots of “seconds,” tomatoes that had blemishes or cracks, or were overripe, bruised, or green. I have no problem with a few imperfections, so I snagged several pounds of beautiful tomatoes, as shown in Sunday’s photo. Four pounds fell into the overripe/blemished category; they went into a bowl with a little balsamic and olive oil. I still have plenty for today’s lunch.

A little over two pounds of the tomatoes were green. Earlier this month, Viv at Seattle Bon Vivant was rhapsodizing about green tomato jam. I found a recipe in Jeanne Lesem’s preserving book (I wonder whose copy this is? Must remember to ask around.) for green tomato jam, and decided to give it a try.

As I’ve recently been making lots of chutneys, which in addition to fruit have onions, vinegar and spices, this ingredient list seemed remarkably short:

2 pounds green tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup, packed, thinly sliced unpeeled lemons (most of one large lemon); reserve seeds
1 tablespoon finely chopped crystallized ginger
1/2 cup water
2 1/2 cups sugar

I think of preserves made with unpeeled citrus as marmalade, rather than jam, but whatever. Lemon and ginger are two of my favorite flavors, and are wonderful together in tea, so this combination sounded promising. And the prepped ingredients were a lovely combination of light, crisp colors, so different from the hot colors of the ripe berries and stone fruits that I usually preserve.

This recipe is one of those two-day events, in which some of the ingredients are cooked together, then allowed to rest overnight before finishing. These two-day recipes are great for my fits of nocturnal preserving. Even if I start at 9 p.m., I’m finished with either half of the process by 10:30. That gives me plenty of time to get ready for bed, then join Paul for our nightly 11 p.m. date with Jon Stewart.

Evening 1: All of the ingredients except the sugar go into a pot, and are brought quickly to a boil. I secure the reserved lemon seeds in a tea ball, and submerge them in the mixture to add their pectiny goodness. Twenty minutes at a strong boil and the fruit is tender; it then gets to rest for a day. The lemon seeds are discarded. The cooked mixture smells much like the lemon-ginger tea that I like; I am encouraged.


Evening 2: The cooked fruit goes back on the stove, on high heat. When it reaches a boil, I dump in the sugar, stirring madly until the sugar melts into the fruit, and the mixture returns to a boil. The sugar changes the aroma from that of tea to that of jam, and, somewhat to my dismay, darkens the pale color of the jam as it cooks. Thirty minutes pass, during which I stir the thickening mixture with increasing frequency; in the end, I am stirring almost constantly to prevent scorching. Because I really want this to be green tomato jam, rather than green tomato sauce (which doesn’t sound as appealing as, say, peach sauce), I test for set on a chilled plate. It sets, so I ladle the jam into jars, cap them, and pop them into boiling water. Fifteen minutes later, I’m listening to the “ploink… ploink ploink” of caps sealing.

There is about 1/3 cup left over after filling 3 8-oz. jars. (This is a small-batch recipe!) I taste the jam while the jars were processing; the flavors of lemon, ginger and tomato are all there, and nicely balanced. However, this jam is green yet, and like chutneys, definitely needs time to blend and mellow.

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