From Mes Confitures by Christine Ferber.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been hearing about French Pastry Chef Christine Ferber and her preserves made from local ingredients. They are supposed to be out-of-this-world good, with unique flavor combinations.

Mes Confitures was originally published in French and then translated into English. Some of the directions are a bit vague, and sometimes you just have to guess at what the author meant. This ought to be interesting.

My plan with Mes Confitures is to try a recipe here or there while I’m concentrating on other cookbooks. I just can’t get excited about making batch after batch of jam or jelly, no matter how unique the flavor combinations may be. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t really like jams or jellies. I think it has something to do with losing the fresh fruit flavor. And I find many preserves to be far too sweet. Maybe this book will turn me around.

The first recipe I tried was a rhubarb, orange and apple jam. It starts off by poaching thin orange slices. Then you add rhubarb and apples. At first, I had a whole lot of fruit and not much liquid, but as the rhubarb broke down and the sugar melted, it started to look more like jam. Ferber’s instruction say to boil until the jam is set, which happens around 221 degrees (F). I boiled for almost an hour and didn’t get higher than about 210 degrees. I decided to go ahead and jar the jam, knowing that it would probably be pretty loose.

The finished product ain’t bad. You get a big hit of orange and apple flavor, but not much rhubarb. It is far too sweet for me on it’s own, but the sweetness is tempered by toast (or kamut biscuits in the above picture). I was really hoping that the rhubarb would give the jam a sour edge, but I guess 4 cups of sugar might make anything sweet. The texture, while loose, set up better than I thought it would. I didn’t bother to sterilize my jars but just kept them in the refrigerator.