Anjali's Food Kaleidoscope

Pineapple jam
Pineapple jam Pineapple jam Pineapple jam Pineapple jam Pineapple jam

Pineapple jam

The first time I tasted homemade “pineapple jam “ was eighteen years ago and I knew that this stuff has the potential to transport you into the “tropical heaven”.

     I was too young to bother to take the recipe from my room mate’s mother who used to send her a big jar of this heavenly stuff and each night after dinner , I would scoop out a big ladle of this absolutely delicious jam and savour it as the ultimate dessert one can get after a meal at the hostel mess.

Pineapple jam

   Years after that I was in Goa, a married lady and whenever I would see truck loads of pineapple being off loaded I would get tempted to make “pineapple jam”. We did not have access to the internet to find the recipe and it was anyways just used to check the mails in cyber cafes.

      I searched for jam recipes in book stores but they all used “pectin” , something which was alien to me. Then I decided to just give it a shot myself. The one thing I remembered was that the jam was grainy, I mean it had very fine shreds of pineapple which just added to the whole taste and texture of this magic stuff and there were whole cloves in it too.

    So armed to the teeth with this information and a little bit of common sense …I made the jam.

Needless to say that I made thin jams …followed by jams which would get stuck to the pan as they were so hard ,liquidy jams ,too sweet jams, too sour jams and finally I hit upon this recipe which is simple …yes …but care has to be taken to the texture of the jam when it is done. THAT is the whole trick.

   The pineapple should be just right. It should not be over ripe and definetly not under ripe though the chances of the former are more likely.

   Now don’t tell me you don’t know how to cut a pineapple….no sweat I didn’t know it myself…..my friend taught me that and since I have yet to make a video of it….you check it out on the you tube.

   So now we have these two pineapples all cut and their eyes removed.

  We grate them and leave the center …which is like a cylinder inside. Grate the pineapple around this.

   Sorry , my hands were too messy to click a snap…so you all will have to take my word for it…or wait till I make it the next time….I promise I will upload these snaps .

   So after grating when I measured the pineapple it was 500 grams. I put 400 grams of sugar and the pineapple along with fives cloves into a heavy bottomed pan and let them cook on the low flame.

   The whole idea of the pineapple - sugar proportion is to take about a 100 grams less or if you have say one kilo pineapple take about 800 grams sugar...no problem with that.

 Of course I stirred in between while I went about my kitchen chores. After about 20 minutes the mixture looked like this…

Pineapple jam

with a hint of liquid in it…I turned the gas off…let the jam cool and then transferred it into a glass bottle and finally refrigerated it. Since I have not used any preservatives except sugar I prefer keeping it in the fridge. Needless to say that it solidifies in a few days in the refrigerator.

   I admit that I should post snaps of how it looked after resting a day in the refrigerator....but well not much of it is left to photograph. I will soon put the snaps ...my word .

   Try it with hot buttered toast or maybe do what I do….just eat it for dessert…its worth the calories any day.

Pineapple jam