Gluts are a way of life when you grow your own. True, staggering seed sowing of veg can help to avoid the need for ‘lettuce with everything’ but there’s little that can be done about apples or gooseberries. Even freezing has its limitations; there are only so many crumbles you can eat. The Jam Maker’s Garden by Holly Farrell offers some alternatives.
Like her earlier book, Grow Your Own Cake, it falls somewhere between gardening advice and recipe book with as much about how to grow crops as varied as blueberries and sweetcorn as there are recipes for such delights as beetroot chutney or cherry jam. All are well illustrated with photos by Jason Ingram.
Jam-making has, she freely admits, a rather old-fashioned image: “It is often used as shorthand for a small-town, small-world, small life . . .”
Yet, in Farrell’s hands it takes on a more modern air: caramelised onion marmalade is de rigour on many smart menus these days.
Despite, the title, The Jam Maker’s Garden is not just about jam and includes chutney and ketchups and she does not advocate growing merely to preserve: “I would be disappointed if you did, for you would be missing out on the pleasures of eating the fresh fruit or vegetables in season.”
In the same vein, there’s little point in growing anything you don’t like to eat. “Give it away and do not grow it again,” she advises.
She opens with a basic run through of how to grow: soil preparation; using compost; growing in containers; raising from seed; pests and diseases. There’s information on fruit trees, the different root stocks, how to train and pruning. For novice gardeners, there’s even a handy picture guide to common weeds.
The cooking side is equally comprehensive, covering definitions – jelly is the same consistency as jam but clear and smooth; cheese is a strained jam, dried so that it can be sliced – equipment and preparing fruit and veg.
Farrell outlines how to test for a set, potting and storage and provides answers to common problems such as dry chutney.
The recipe side of The Jam Maker’s Garden divides neatly into two: the fruit garden and the veg garden with subsections for spring and summer, and late summer and autumn.
Each then has a range of suggested uses for crops, some traditional, such as raspberry jam, others more unusual, including pear caramel, windfall marmalade, and rhubarb and rosemary ketchup.
Some of the recipes have hints borne of long experience – stirring from side to side when making curd is faster than going around and around the pan – and there are often variations on basic recipes; lemon curd could be lemon, honey and ginger curd. There’s also cross-referencing to cultivation advice or other recipes for the ingredients
And it’s not just fruit and veg: edible flowers and herbs are also included as she has concentrated more on home-grown ‘additives’ rather than exotic spices.
Farrell describes jam as “bottled sunshine” and says a “line of gleaming jars on the kitchen shelf brings as much pleasure as a line of crops in the garden”.
With this book on your shelves, you could also have the pleasure of solving that glut problem.
• The Jam Maker’s Garden by Holly Farrell, photographs by Jason Ingram, is published by Frances Lincoln. RRP £17.99. Buy Now (If you buy via the Amazon link, I get a small payment. The price you pay is not affected.)
• Review copy supplied by Frances Lincoln.
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