Jammin'

Well, chutneying to be more precise this evening but it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Tonight was an evening spent happily chopping chewy jewels of dried fruit; dicing so many onions that even my contact lensed eyes began to water and trying to disguise the waft of vinegary fumes from the kitchen by lighting scented candles in every room in the house. A window opened earlier to release the sting of the vinegar as it boils has left the kitchen cold as you first enter, but the heat from the pans bubbling away instantly warms as you stand over them. Stir gently – there is no “set” to be tested for in making chutney – this is even more alchemy than making jams and jellies. Chutneys have to be felt through the spoon: how much vinegar is left? Enough to allow a pleasant dollop after it has spent its’ month in seclusion? Too much and the vinegar will not meld into the fruit and sugar and no amount of time in a dark and lonely cupboard will make this jar welcome…too little and the sticky, dark fruit will have to prised from the jar: unwilling to spread, unlikely to charm even the most plain cheese piece. Chutneys, for all their ease of preparation demand more care from the cook – careful balancing of flavours, a watchful eye as the bubble away and faith that the time is right to seal them in their jars. A month. A month before you know if that evening was truly worthwhile.

There is a certain nostalgia in making preserves that has seen it rise in popularity recently. Making jams, jellies, chutneys and pickles was once the mainstay of women who had retired – women who had the time to set aside for such domestic indulgence. And there is an indulgence in giving an afternoon or evening over to your kitchen, to yourself. For the last few years I have gradually grown in confidence in my kitchen. I have always loved “pottering”, but much as I can sweep aside writing for weeks with the notion that there simply isn’t enough time, I never manage to push aside that love of being at home, in my kitchen – making and creating, stirring and chopping. There is, for me, a serenity to be found in standing at the stove with pans bubbling away: the house filled with smells that I hope my children will always associate with home, my cupboards filled with the labour of my love: neatly stacked labelled jars: SEVILLE ORANGE MARMALADE, STRAWBERRY JAM, RASPBERRY JAM, BRAMBLE JAM(BLE), REDCURRANT JELLY, SLOE GIN, RASPBERRY VODKA. The makings of a batch of scones always at the ready, pancakes for the kids when no packet of crisps will satisfy their snack time urges.

My love of preserving stems not from a love of preserves. In fact, of all the preserves I make, I only eat marmalade and chutneys. It all began with a pan, a simple jam pan. A jam pan that had spent the best part of two decades wrapped in newspaper in a shed in my Gran’s garden. The arrival of this pan in my life, my Great Grandmother’s “jeely” pan was the turning point. This pan is my link to the past – to my past, a woman that I never knew but whose presence continues to influence the way in which I make a home for my children.

I was fortunate to spend the earliest years of my life living in a house that backed on to the back garden of my grandparent’s home. Theirs was a house that was always filled with those smells that I try now to recreate for my children: a comfort that meant there was always someone home. Did I always associate the warmth of the kitchen and the smells of my Gran’s cooking with love? Not when she tried to force feed me boiled egg mashed in a china teacup with a spoonful of butter – a taste that has forever tainted my relationship with the humble ouef. But yes, her homemade fruit pies, her homemade soups, her home made of love that emanated from the tiny kitchen of a humble house in a small Ayrshire village. A home that despite the death of my grandfather and the continuing loss of my Gran’s memories, still makes me smile just to think of it. My grandparents, like most others of their generation, kept a simply kitchen garden stocked with the essentials of fruit and vegetables to keep their oven busy and our bellies full. Whilst I haven’t quite managed to recreate their Good Life, I know that in pottering in my kitchen I’m doing more than simply stocking up the cupboards. In our family, Christmas gifts from my Gran were more about the generosity of her kitchen than her purse. Bottles of ginger wine, jars of pickled onions, homemade marmalade…these were the things that marked Christmas had arrived.

So I spent my evening chopping and measuring, stirring and sterilising, writing labels and tying string around the tops of hot jars of newly sealed Christmas and Cranberry chutneys. In a month it will be Christmas, my Gran is coming to spend Christmas with my parents. She has only fleeting glimpses of who we are – mistaking me for my mum, my daughter for me. And I will parcel up a jar of Chutney, a jar of Strawberry jam and a bottle of Sloe Gin. Creating new traditions for my family from the ones that hold strongest for me.