Seedless is the key here.  This is my jam of choice for filling doughnuts and what would life be without the occasional doughnut?  I have a real weakness for doughnuts hot from the fryer.  Can you tell I’m eating super healthily at the moment?  

In actuality, I made this batch almost a month ago – before I was sucked into relocating three of my children to their university cities.

I know this is a post which is going to get ‘lost in translation’ between English English and American English – and goodness knows what’s happening elsewhere.  Anyone reading from Australia?  So … in this kitchen:

• Jam = a cooked mix of sugar and fruit which has been mashed, chopped or squished.
• Jelly = a cooked mix of sugar and fruit which is strained to give a clear liquid.
• Preserves = jam which has big bits of fruit in it.
• Conserve = jam with added extras, such as nuts or mixed fruit.

Then, there’s fruit curds, marmalade, fruit butters, chutneys, pickles – but I’m thinking they’re for another day.

Here I’m squishing my fruit and not straining it which makes it ‘jam’.  This batch began with a large trolley of discounted raspberries.  15p for 170g.  Irresistible.  The truth is, it’s really better to make jam with fruit which is slightly under-ripe because the pectin levels (which is what gives you the ‘set’) are at their highest, but ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ ..

Raspberry Jam rather divides people into those who claim it as the ‘jam of all jams’ and those who can’t get past the seeds.  Undeniably raspberries are a pippy fruit and I’m sandwiched between a parent who avoids seeds (it’s a teeth thing) and a couple of children who refuse any jam with ‘bits’.  This means I rarely make a ‘classic’ raspberry jam because I will eat it and I’m the one who probably shouldn’t.

I could have turned these berries into a raspberry jelly which removes the seeds, but we’re in ‘bramble’ season now and I’ve already got a shelf full of bramble and apple jelly.  Or raspberry curd, which I love but those doughnuts were seducing me …

Discard any fruit showing signs of spoilage and give them a light rinse.  Place the raspberries in a heatproof bowl and place in a low oven for 40 minutes to an hour.

There’s not a lot to see – but warming the fruit makes the next bit  so much easier, particularly if you’re using a sieve as opposed to a mouli.

My weapon of choice is a ‘Good Grips’ food mill.  Sieving is your other option.  I would suggest trying to utilise any available child labour if you’re going that route.

After a period of energetic squashing …

What you are left with is smoothish raspberry pulp.

Preserving is a bit like bread making in that you can, if you wish, make it incredibly complicated and ‘scientific’.  I could, at this point, check the pectin levels in my fruit …

Or .. you can just make the jam.  You might miss a certain level of perfection, but ripe fruit waits for no cook and I’ve only got a small window of time to get this done.

I re-use glass jars without any qualms and I buy new lids.  Clean, rinsed jars and lids go into a low oven for 30 minutes.

Traditional jam-making law adds the same weight of sugar as fruit, but you can tweak that depending on how sweet you like your jam and how naturally sweet your fruit is.  Sugar is the preservative so don’t go mad.  I weigh the fruit pulp and add three quarters of that weight in white granulated sugar.  It’s a trade-off between a softer set and a fresher taste.

I use a maslin pan because I own one, but it isn’t essential.  They’re the pan of choice because they give a large surface area which reduces the time you will need to boil the fruit/sugar to reach a set.  The quicker you reach a ‘set’ the cleaner tasting.

Warming the sugar merely speeds things up.  If you’ve planned ahead – great.  But it doesn’t actually matter.  Over a low heat, let the sugar dissolve.

Keep stirring until you can feel no undissolved sugar on the bottom of the pan.

I add lemon juice to raspberry jam.  It’s high in pectin and helps with the set.  Redcurrants would be an alternative.

Bring everything up to a boil.  It’s reached a ‘set’ when a sugar thermometer reads 105ºC and it’ll take about 5 minutes.  Mine was a fraction under but I made the decision not to add any more lemon because I’m happy with a ‘soft set’.  If you boil for too long the jam will have a caramel tang.

Turn off the heat.

Now is the moment to remove the scum.  Just scoop it off.  You’re unlikely to get everything.

A knob of unsalted butter deals with the little that is left.

Stir, clockwise, until the butter has melted and the jam is crystal clear.

Take the jam jars from the oven and pour the hot jam into them.  You need to take it to the top of the jar and immediately screw the lid on top.

Leave to cool.  Then label.

Eat.

Seedless Raspberry Jam

• 1.5kg fresh raspberries
• 1kg granulated sugar (adjust when you weigh the fruit pulp)
• 1 lemon

Check over the raspberries and discard any with signs of spoilage.  Give the fruit a rinse and place in a heatproof bowl.  Warm the fruit in a low oven for an hour.

Wash the recycled glass jam jars and new lids.  Let them dry in the low oven.

Meanwhile, sieve out the seeds.  A food mouli makes easy work of it.  Weigh the fruit pulp and adjust the amount of granulated sugar.

Place the fruit and sugar in a maslin pan and heat gently.  Stir until the sugar has dissolved.  Add the juice of a lemon and bring everything to a boil.

After about 5 minutes a sugar thermometer will read 105ºC (or thereabouts).

Skim off the scum.  A small knob of unsalted butter, stirred through in a clockwise direction will deal with any remaining.

Pour into the sterilised jars, taking the jam to within a few millimetres of the rim. Immediately cover with the sterilised lids and lightly screw on.  Tighten when cool.  Then label.

Eat.

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We’re in the second week of tennis at Wimbledon.  I can’t in all honesty say it’s something I really get involved with other than I notice it’s all that’s on the BBC.  I suspect it’s the scars of my childhood – my mum, sporty to the core, followed avidly from Queens onwards and I found it very annoying.

On the other hand, I’m very fond of strawberries which seems to be inextricably linked with the event.  And cream.  And love a glass of Pimms.  Or two.

I read the other day that Pimms is now hopelessly uncool.  Since I turned fifty on Tuesday I’m mentally preparing myself, as Jenny Joseph’s poem suggests, for the wearing of purple and the spending of my pension on brandy.  I’m starting with drinking Pimm’s without shame and reclaiming the ice lolly.  It was a short step to my putting the two together.

Why should the children have all the fun?  Grown-ups need ice lollies, too.

These three strawberry specimens are mine.  Mine, in that I grew them.  I would like you to know I treat all my strawberries with an equal lack of attention and have absolutely no idea why they show such individuality.  When they’re particularly small they are very ‘seedy’ and this is a brilliant way of making sure they don’t go to waste.

Chop the strawberries into pieces and let the lemonade go flat.

Put the chopped strawberries in a blender and some mint leaves.  For some reason I’m growing micro mint and I used a couple of sprigs.  If you have a usual sized mint leaf – about 8.

Give it a whiz.

Pass the purée through a fine sieve to remove the pips.

Then add the flat lemonade.

Pimm’s!  Don’t go overboard.  Too much alcohol will stop the lolly freezing well.

The sugar …

Reduce that at your peril.  Sugar is a lubricant between the ice crystals.  Not sure I entirely understand what’s going on, but it’s how you get a smooth lolly.  Stir until all graininess has disappeared and then transfer to a jug.

Pour into your ice lolly moulds.  Mine don’t have a top, so I freeze for an hour before I try and insert the lolly stick.

(You can use any freezable container – paper cups, yoghurt pots …  The only thing you should watch out for is that the top is wider than the base or you’ll meet with disaster when you try and unmould it.)

After that initial freeze, I cover the mould with tin foil and push the lolly stick in.  The foil just gives the stick a little more support.

When it comes to unmoulding my lollies, I wrap a warm tea-towel around the mould to loosen the lolly.  Being as mine are silicone, I then push up from the bottom.

Eat.

Pimm’s and Strawberry Ice Lollies

10 x 80ml lollies

• 500g/1lb 2oz strawberries, hulled and cut into pieces
• 8 large mint leaves
• 50ml/2fl oz Pimm’s
• 250ml/9fl oz lemonade
• 100g/4oz caster sugar

Measure out the lemonade and allow to go flat.

Put the strawberries and the mint leaves in a blender and whiz to a purée.  Sieve to remove all the pips.

Add the lemonade, the Pimm’s and the sugar to the smooth strawberry purée.  Stir until the sugar has dissolved, then transfer to a jug.

Pour the mixture into the ice lolly moulds and freeze overnight.

If using a lolly mould without a lid, freeze for an initial hour before inserting a stick.  Foil placed over the top will give the lolly sticks more support.

To serve, wrap the mould in a warm tea-towel until the lolly has loosened.

Eat.

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This is just one of many, many tomato salads I make over the course the summer.  I love them.  It probably has something to do with the Sunday afternoon trips down my Grandad Dowton’s crazy paved garden path to pick tomatoes from his greenhouse.  Always supervised.  (It wasn’t, you must know, the kind of garden you were allowed to play in.  Wide flower beds were planted, Victorian style, with high maintenance bedding plants all lovingly raised from seed.)

I loved that strong, sweet smell of summer as you opened the greenhouse door.  Then, my brother and I would giggle over the irregular shaped ones before being given a warm tomato each to eat on the way back to the kitchen.

This Greek-Style Tomato Salad isn’t anything my grandparents would have served.  I’m not sure if they ever tasted feta cheese and I’m certain they didn’t eat olives.

When you think about it they wouldn’t have been brought up on tomatoes.  The Victorians thought they caused illness unless you boiled them into submission.  Tomatoes only became a regular part of the British diet during the food rationing of the Second World War when any source of vitamin C was a good thing.

For all we think we’re so much more sophisticated with our food choices now, supermarkets sell some tasteless tomatoes.  On the vine or off it, they’re picked green and left to ripen.  I’m not convinced it’s worth paying the extra money charged for the on-the-vine sort and am absolutely certain there’s no point buying anything that has been transported miles in refrigerated storage units.

Mine came from a local farmers’ market, but the best tomatoes of all are the ones you grow yourself.  Second best, are the excess garden produce you sometimes see placed on tables by front gates.

Here’s the entire cast of characters of my salad, minus the feta which is still tucked in the fridge.  I made this on 1 July and that was a record breaking warm day and my kitchen is South facing.  It was hot.

The round salad tomato is fine.  Don’t put them in the fridge and store root end down.  I have absolutely no idea why that works, but stem end down keeps them better.  When you come to use them, if there’s any decay you should throw the entire tomato away.  No just cutting off the rotten bit.

For a salad like this, I like the skins off.  Put a saucepan of water on to the boil and cut a shallow cross in the base end of the tomato. You’ll find it easier if you use a serrated knife – a bread knife is fine!

When the water is boiling, pop the tomatoes in for 30 seconds.  1 minute, tops.

Drain, then put the tomatoes into a bowl of cold water.

The skins peel off.

There they are.

Cut into quarters and slice out the core.

Then into bite sized crescents.

Season with sea salt and crushed black peppercorns.  A little sugar will help sweeten if you’re not entirely convinced they’re sufficiently sun-kissed.

Then, cover and leave to ‘settle’ for an hour.  I had a fly in the kitchen and spent the next ten minutes or so darting about the kitchen with a dampened tea towel in my hand.  I got the blighter.

Wash, trim any straggly green bits and chop off the roots.

And slice.

Roughly chop a bunch of flat-leaf parsley.

Some fresh oregano, if you have it.  Just the leaves and roughly chop.

I love olives.  Like Globe Artichokes, I met them in my twenties and thought they were so sophisticated.  Yes, I hated my first olive – but I worked at it.  Now I pop them like sweets.

These are Kalamata olives and I buy them stone in.  You don’t need a fancy olive stoner.  I just cut mine in half and ease any stubborn stones out with the tip of my knife.

When it’s time to serve, start layering everything up.  Add the spring onions.

Parsley, oregano and olives.

Not all feta is equal.  I look for barrel-aged feta made from sheep or goat milk and buy in a block which I store in brine.  (The best feta I’ve ever eaten was made at home by a Greek lady living in London, so under EU rules I’m not even sure she could call it feta.)

If you want to tone down the salty edge, you can soak your feta block in a half milk/half water for an hour.

Crumble in the feta and dried oregano.

Add olive oil, lemon zest and the juice of a lemon.

Give everything a mix.  Eat.

Greek-Style Greek Salad

Serves 8

• 12 ripe tomatoes, skinned
• Sea salt and cracked black peppercorns
• 1 tsp of sugar, optional
• 8 spring onions, including the green ends, finely sliced
• Bunch of fresh flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• 2 tablespoons of fresh oregano, leaves only, roughly chopped
• 20 Kalamata Olives, stoned
• 150g/5oz feta cheese
• 4 tablespoons dried oregano
• 12 tablespoons of cold-pressed Greek olive oil
• Grated zest and juice of one unwaxed lemon

Core the tomatoes and cut into bite-sized crescents.  Arrange on a serving plate and sprinkle over sea salt and crushed black peppercorns.  Sugar, if needed.  Cover and leave for 45 minutes – 1 hour.

When you are ready to serve, sprinkle over the chopped spring onions, chopped parsley, chopped oregano, stoned olive and dried oregano.  Crumble over the feta.  Add the lemon zest, olive oil and lemon juice.

Eat.

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Yesterday was a record breaking hot day – and this was lunch.  I made some olive bread and put together a Greek-Style Tomato Salad, too, but I’ll post them next week.  I think I must be thinking ‘Greece’ because the news is so full of scenes from Athens.  Tough times ahead for a lovely country whichever way they vote, I fear.

I love Greek food, but then I love the herbs that predominate in it – oregano, mint, dill, bay leaves, Greek basil, thyme and fennel are the ones that spring to mind.  Being a home cook, I have to use what I can buy.  My oregano is not the evocative rigani, as far as I’m aware.  It’s Bart’s.  Greek basil, I can get.  The bitter salad leaves don’t taste quite as bitter as they do under Greek sunshine, but I probably would balk at so many unnecessary air-miles just to feed my children lunch.

Nothing for it, a visit to Greece is in my future.

In the meantime, we’re coming to the end of the British asparagus season.  I have treated my early spears with utmost respect and I’m now putting them in tarts, wrapping in pancakes and making them into salads.

I picked up a couple of bundles – which was a little over 500g.  There’s a point on an asparagus spear where it’ll snap naturally.  That place marks the end of the fibrous bit and the start of the tender, delicious bit.

(Incidentally, I read something the other day about the English style of eating – and cooking – asparagus.  Apparently, we steam the whole asparagus spear and then use the fibrous bit to hold.  I will confess to eating with my fingers on occasion, but I’m afraid I eat the whole thing and would be irritated to get fibrous bits between my teeth.  Plus, I am inclined to lick my fingers when no-one is looking rather than look for a finger bowl.  I would be more disappointed in myself if the writer didn’t labour under the assumption all households own an asparagus steamer but I have never lived in a household which possessed one.)

If you are aesthetically fastidious, you can neaten up the ends with a knife.  I do that.  Sorry!

My asparagus I would classify as ‘medium’.  What chefs call sprue asparagus (that’s the spindly ones) I’d use for something else.  Fatter asparagus will need peeling.  Just the lower part to make sure what you have in your salad is tender.

Whatever you are left with – pop the snapped off ends and any trimmings in a freezer bag.  That’s asparagus soup in the making.

The asparagus spears I give a rinse under running water and fill a wide saucepan with about 5cm/2″ of water.  Just enough to cover the asparagus in a single layer.  Ish.  You can be a little relaxed about it.

When the water is boiling add a little sea salt.  I season lightly, partly because I’m going to save the asparagus water for soup and that will intensify the salt content and partly because these spears are going in a flavourful dressing.

Simmer for 3 minutes.  It’s almost more of a blanch.  Just tender.  Then drain, reserving the water if you want to make soup.  I put mine in a freezer bag for another day.  Usually, I lay the spears on kitchen paper to dry .. but I’d run out.

And the dressing …

Finely zest one lemon.  Put it and the juice into a bowl.

100ml/3½fl oz of cold-pressed Greek olive oil.  Use one you like the flavour of.

1 teaspoon of dried oregano.

Salt and pepper.  This is such a subjective thing, but I used 2 scant teaspoons of coarse sea salt and crushed 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar.

Give the drained – and still perky – asparagus a toss in the dressing.

Finely chop three shallots and add those.

A small bunch of flat-leaf parsley.  I had to use a small supermarket pot and I used it all.  Roughly chop.  It’s part of the salad so I like to see bits of parsley.

Give everything a light toss and leave it at room temperature for all the flavours to get acquainted.  If you want to leave it longer than an hour, pop into the fridge and bring it back to room temperature before serving.

Eat.

Greek-Style Asparagus Salad

Serves 4-6 as a side.

• 2 bundles of medium asparagus spears (about 500g/1lb)
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 100ml/3½fl oz of cold-pressed Greek olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of dried oregano
• 3 shallots, finely chopped
• small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon of roughly crushed black peppercorns
• Sea-salt, to taste

Snap off the tough ends of the asparagus spears and freeze to use in stocks or soup.  Rinse the spears under running water.

Bring 5cm/2½” of water to a boil in a wide saucepan.  Season lightly and add the spears.  Simmer for 3 minutes, or until the asparagus spears are just tender.  Drain and spread on kitchen towel to dry.

Place the zest and juice of the lemon in a bowl.  Add 100ml/3½fl oz of cold-pressed Greek olive oil, 1 teaspoon of dried oregano and season with salt and crushed black peppercorns.

Lightly toss the asparagus spears in the dressing.

Add the finely chopped shallots and the roughly chopped parsley.  Give everything a final toss and serve at room temperature.

Eat.

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I wasn’t fond of gooseberries as a child and I told everyone the reason for that was because they made me ‘blink’.  I was right.  They can be lip pursing-ly sour and even the sweetest need sugar.  What’s more, they are spiteful to pick, with thorns like spears.

Gooseberry Fool was the only way I was prepared to eat them.  Now, I’ve branched out but it’s still important to treat them with love – which is probably why they’re not so easy to find.  If you don’t grow them yourself you’re more likely to find gooseberries at farm shops and farmers’ markets than at the supermarket.

(Please note the artistic positioning of gooseberries and elderflowers in this photo.)

The parent recipe of this cake features in my mum’s recipe collection as ‘Apple Cake’ and I suspect it will have entered my mum’s life via a ‘parish cookbook’; the kind that’s produced by fantastic home cooks in aid of their Grade I listed 12th bell towers and my mum would always buy when on holiday.  Warm from the oven, it’s lovely with cream or custard and eaten as a pudding.  Cold, it’s perfect picnic and packed lunch food.

Gooseberry and elderflower is an early summer switch away from apple.

It’s a wonderfully simple cake and easy to scale up or down.  It’s the same weight of flour and fruit, in this case gooseberries.  Half the weight of the flour in sugar and the same of butter.  A little baking powder and milk to mix.  That’s it.

No eggs – which is useful if you’re baking for someone who reacts to the protein in eggs.

14oz/380g plain flour, mixed with 2½ tsp baking powder.

7oz/190g butter ‘rubbed in’.  Using just the tips of your fingers you lightly ‘rub in’ small cubes of butter.

If you aren’t as washing up phobic as I am you could blitz the flour, sugar and butter together in a food processor.  Breadcrumbs is the usual way to describe the result you are hoping for but I think sandy rubble is closer to what I aim for in this kind of cake.

Stir through the sugar.

There is no escaping this bit.  Topping and tailing.  Pinch off the top and the tail with your fingers.

You are left with what looks like veiny grapes.  In order to prevent the gooseberries sinking you need to cut them in half or quarters, depending on their size.

Stir the prepared gooseberries through the flour mixture.

Now for the elderflower cordial.  If you haven’t made this, there are commercial versions available.

I melt butter to lightly grease the sides and bottom of my cake tin.  In an ideal world (the kind where days are longer than twenty-four hours and university student children didn’t want their washing done) I would line the sides.  Truthfully, I rarely do for a cake like this and I have pre-cut bake o’ glide to fit my tin collection.

Now, it’s the liquid.  75ml/2½ fl oz of undiluted elderflower cordial.

You’ll need a little milk.  Go careful.

You want a dry mix rather than a more usual cake batter.  The gooseberries will release lots of moisture.

Level out the top.  To get a nice flat top, I use the back of a spoon.  If you dunk it in water first, so much the better.

An 20cm round cake tin cooks in the Aga Baking Oven (rack on the floor) in 1 hour.  Conventionally, it’s 180ºC/Gas Mark 4/350ºF.

If you want you can sprinkle the warm cake with a little caster sugar.

I forgot.  Since we were eating this warm with pouring double cream I don’t know that it mattered.

Eat.

Gooseberry and Elderflower Cake

Makes 1 20cm/8″ round cake or a 20cm x 25cm tray bake.

• 380g/14oz plain flour
• 190g/7oz butter
• 190g/7oz caster sugar
• 2½ tsp baking powder
• 380g/14oz gooseberries, top and tailed, then halved or quartered depending on their size
• 75ml/2½fl oz elderflower cordial
• A drizzle of milk, as needed

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC/Gas Mark 4/350ºF

Add the baking powder to the flour and whisk to combine.

Rub the cold cubed butter into the flour, then add the sugar and prepared gooseberries.

Drizzle over the elderflower cordial and use a knife to stir through.  Add a drizzle of milk to make a dry mix, remembering the gooseberries will release lots of juice as the cake cooks.

Bake for 1 hour, turning halfway if necessary.  (Aga:  Baking Oven with the rack on the floor – 1 hour.)

Sprinkle with caster sugar, if desired.  Allow to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack.  Serve warm with cream or custard or cold.

Eat.

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