Tag: jelly

Rainy season?

Just back from Australia to Tokyo, and I find that the rainy season is getting near. The air is already quite humid and temperatures are mildly warm or hot. Soon it will be time to harvest the plums in the garden, even hopping it is not too late already… It’s been 3 weeks we haven’t go to the country house… I can easily imagine how green and lush the garden is and the hydrangeas will be all ready to bloom soon.

One thing I like to prepare with plums, other than ume-shu, ume-syrup and umeboshi is plum jam and plum jelly, something that you can enjoy right away and doesn’t have to sit for weeks or months. I am not very good at making jams and preserves but I keep trying. Jelly or yokan (ようかん) is much easier for me… but it uses only a little bit of fruits compared to all we have…

Japanese plum jelly – ume yokan

I used about twenty green large plums, sugar to your liking, agar-agar, and about 2/3L of water.

First wash and remove the stems of the plums, boil the water and add the plums, cook under cover at low heat until the plums are soft and the skin and flesh detach easily. Then add the sugar and the agar-agar (quantity will depend on how hard you like the jelly and how much liquid remains in your pan. Cook at medium heat for 5-10min and then pour in a dish. Wait until it cools down to refrigerate. After 2-3h you can serve, by cutting blocks out of the jelly. That’s it!

Bayberry – 山桃

Freshly harvested bayberry
Freshly harvested bayberry
Syrup in the making  
Syrup in the making  

We have a bayberry tree in our garden. At first it was so much fighting with the surrounding trees it was small and not giving really fruits but now that we’ve trimmed trees around and at the foot remove all the weed and tiny bamboos it’s growing quite quickly and this year it is giving tones of fruits. A large part of them felt during the big storm early Saturday morning so I decided to harvest the one still on the tree and ripe enough, which means that I hervested 2kg of fruits. Bayberry are very similar to strawberry tree fruits but they are an Asian species. I only know the Asian version in syrup in cocktails in Asian restaurant when I was a kid! Actually they taste a little like cranberry while having a very different texture.

I didn’t know what to do with that many fruits  thanks to IG followers advice and a bit of net browsing I managed to know how to prepare them:

  1. wash them under running water
  2. soak them 2h in slightly salted water to be sure there is no bug in: I collected a little worm only! Remove the stems.
  3. wash them and dry them with a clothe. 
Jelly
Jelly

now they are ready for any preparation. I did some sugar syrup with 700g of fruits and 700g of block sugar. Now I just need to wait for the sugar to melt and for the syrup to be ready. The other thing I had in mind was jam. Unfortunately without any pectin it does jellify apparently so my jam ended up in an other syrup that I used right away and o make jelly for dessert adding just agar agar to the syrup and using a mold. I like my jelly no too stiff do I used little agar agar, and added a fruit in each piece. I have also used the same syrup for flavoring a cake for our breakfast tomorrow. I removed the seeds and added the pulp and syrup to a yogurt cake mix without any oil or butter in. I am sure there are many more variations to think about!!!

Plum jelly – 梅羊羹

It is extremely rare I cook something sweet for dessert, or I cook dessert at all. Unless we have guests for dinner our meals end sometimes with a fruit, sometimes a yogurt but most often with just a little piece of chocolate. In the trading with our neighbor, fruits from our garden in exchange whatever she has, the other day she gave some plum jam and she told me: “you know, it’s sour, but it’s really good in plum jelly!”. OK then, let’s make some plum jelly (梅羊羹-ume youkan)… Well it’s really simple and it works also with any jam you like (I trued also with my natsumikan jam). You need only a flat recipient, some jam, 1/2L of water and a little bag of agar-agar or 寒天-kanten. Boil the water in a pan, add the jam, then the kanten, stir well while still heating for a few minutes. Set in the flat recipient  and wait for the liquid to cool down, then refregirate. Before serving cut in pieces of the shape you fancy.

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