Life’s just peachy- tales of jam and spanish holidays

I went abroad for the first time when I was ten, and this was no mean feat in those days. There was no Stavros, so no cheap charter flights, we drove to Spain in my Uncle Jim’s car and all in all it took about three days non-stop, this was a time when you got thoroughly over-excited to see another British car abroad and flashed your lights and honked the horn wildly when you saw their GB sticker. We stayed at a tiny hotel called the Hotel Jano, in a small fishing village called Tamariu. I have no idea if it’s still there or what the place is like now. So, did this give me a lifelong appreciation of Spanish culture and European travel? Probably, but mostly it gave me a love of peach jam. Breakfast at the Hotel Jano consisted of a fresh, white bread, unsalted butter and a bowl of their home-made peach jam. I had never tasted anything like it,until then the height of my jam-like sophistication was to have lime marmalade rather than silver shred. I became a stealth jam burglar and would wait until the other guests had finished their breakfast in the hope that they may have left some fo the precious peach heaven that I could just eat by the spoonful. I have finally re-created that childhood taste and it is just as fresh and fruity as I remember.

Peaches are cheap and plentiful at the moment (2 punnets for 1 at Sainsbury’s Taplow) so go ahead and try it! You will need: approx 1.2kg of peaches, juice of 1 lemon, 1.4 kg of jam sugar and 1/2 bottle of certo, pectin. I am using liquid pectin for this recipe, because it means that you don’t have to over-boil the fruit to get it to setting temperature, which for something as delicate as peaches is important. Method: First make some light incisions in the peach skin as if you were going to cut it into quarters, then plunge the peaches in to a pan of boiling water. Take the pan off the heat and drain the peaches after 1 minute, the skin will immediately start to shrivel and will be really easy to peel off. Chop the fruit (this is quite messy) in to chunks, weigh it and it should now be 1.kg and place in a large saucepan, add the lemon juice and the sugar and place on a low heat, stirring gently until all the sugar has dissolved. bring to the boil, and let it boil hard for only two minutes. Take off the heat and stir in the certo. Leave for 20 minutes, so that the fruit doesn’t float to the top before bottling in to sterilised jars. This will make about 6 to 8 jars. This jam is lovely on toast, bread and butter, made in to a jam sponge pudding, or just eaten from the spoon.