Rhubarb and ginger jam..mmmm

We grow it here; it is the first fruit of the year we harvest ; and we ate some this weekend. But I find it a much more difficult crop to cultivate here than I did in the UK. This is because of our climate – rhubarb grows in cool climates (think Yorkshire) and once the average daily temperature tops 24 C it starts to get a bit sparse and growth slows right down. We enjoy it now, but only for about a month.

Rhubarb facts:

The leaves are poisonous. They contain oxalic acid, which can cause kidney damage. Incidentally bee keepers use oxalic acid (in minute quantities and when there is no danger of contaminating honey) in the beehive to counteract varroa – a bee parasite.

You don’t cut rhubarb, you pull the stems away from the plant at ground level.

Rhubarb is greedy - feed the soil around it with lots of organic matter.

In France, don’t harvest rhubarb after May as the plants need to build their strength up in the second half of the year for the following year’s crop.

Rhubarb is low in pectin (the stuff that makes jam set easily). So when you make jam you need to introduce extra pectin in the form of lemon juice.

Rhubarb and Ginger Jam

1 kg plain white sugar

1kg rhubarb weighed without the leaves

2 lemons

100g preserved ginger finely chopped

About 4 cm of ginger root lightly crushed and wrapped in a muslin pouch

Tiny piece of butter

Chop the rhubarb into pieces about 2 centimetres long and put them in a glass bowl layering with the sugar as you go. Squeeze the juice of both lemons over the top. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave it overnight to draw the juices out of the rhubarb.

Next day, prepare your jars and lids – i.e. wash and rinse them very thoroughly and put them into a warm oven (100 degrees C) for at least 20 minutes to sterilize them. Pour boiling water over your jam jar lids. You will probably need 4 x 500g jars, but put 5 in the oven to be on the safe side.

Put a tea plate into your deep freeze to get really cold. Use this later to test for a set – see below.

Put the rhubarb mixture into a jam pan and bring to the boil along with the muslin bag of ginger root. Boil for about 10 minutes and then add the chopped preserved ginger. Continue to boil until setting point is reached. Then take the muslin bag of ginger, give it a squeeze and throw it away.

[You test for setting point in two ways – using a jam thermometer which will give you the temperature jam has to reach in order to set or by dropping a small amount of jam onto a really cold plate. If you push the cooled jam with your finger and it wrinkles on the surface it is ready and ought to set when cold. I use both methods in tandem.]

When setting point is reached remove from the heat, remove any scum which has developed on the surface of the jam and add a tiny knob of butter. This helps get rid of any last traces of the scum. Stir until the butter is completely dissolved.

Using a jam funnel ladle the jam into the hot jars. Screw on the lids as soon as you can bear to do so (a horribly dangerous operation). Then, to sterilise the inside of the lids, turn the jam jars upside down and leave them like that for 10 minutes.

Don’t forget to turn the jars the right way round again and then leave the jam to set before labeling and storing somewhere cool and dark.

Put the rhubarb leaves on the compost heap.