Pineapple and Ginger Marmalade

 

I’m quite new to the whole jam-making thing. I’ve made tomato chutney for years and have become pretty adept at that process, simply because I refuse to eat rice and curry without some form of condiment or the other, and this is my favourite. And I always have a bottle of homemade pineapple jam in the fridge, but this is little more than pineapple stewed until sticky. I hadn’t ventured towards other forms of preserves until I came across a recipe for pineapple and ginger marmalade in David Lebovitz’s wonderful book, Ready for Dessert. This looked interesting because: pineapple. And also: candied ginger. Not to mention: rum.

So I thought I’d give it a whirl and spent the next day or so tinkering with pineapple and orange, which was included because marmalade, as any jam-making aficionado will tell you, is a jam that must contain some form of citrus fruit. So the orange went in and was boiled, along with the pineapple, for a while before the concoction was left to rest overnight. The next morning, the sugar was added and the mixture cooked down until thick and syrupy. Besides the two fruit, this marmalade also contains a generous quantity of candied ginger. A crunchy layer of sweetness combined with the pleasantly sharp zing of the tender, champagne-hued slices – if this marmalade had a secret ingredient, this would be it. It is added at the end of the cooking process, when the marmalade has reached setting point, as is the rum.

There is really something about jam-making that makes one feel smugly accomplished in a domestic goddess-y sort of way. Bottled and cooled, this marmalade looks like a jar of golden, late afternoon sunlight. The candied pieces of fruit are suspended in the jam like jewels – promises of bursts of flavour. This preserve tastes every bit as good as it looks – Sri Lanka in jam form. I’m so pleased to have discovered another way to use the gorgeous, sunshine-yellow pineapple that is so abundant here. Living in Australia, one of the foods I missed the most from home was pineapple. Brisbane thinks it produces great pineapple – sorry to disillusion you, Sunshine State, but you’ve got nothing on our Lankan babies. Insipidly coloured, hardly yellow, and often sour, these are as far removed from the vibrantly sweet Sri Lanka fruit as chalk and cheese.

Anyway this jam is simply wonderful – one bottle was gobbled up, lickety-split, within a week at our place. Time to make some more.