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DOMINIQUE ANSEL: Jams can seem really simple,
but it's a real art mastered by just a few people in France.
We're going to make a quick jam, which
is fast-forwarded techniques of hard-to-make jam.
For this purpose, we're going to put it inside our tart.
It's delicious.
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We're going to make a fruit jam, which
is a very simple process with a few ingredients.
The way we're going to make it today, I'm going to use purée,
which is, essentially, juice extracted from the fresh fruit.
This one was already made.
But if you make your own, you can easily take strawberries,
wash them, remove the stem, and pass it through the blender,
pass it through a sieve, and then use
this to make your jam base.
There's a lot of purée that I use all year long they actually
manufacture back in France.
And they are made when the fruit is the ripest, when
the fruits are really on-season, and when the fruit is the best.
So to make the strawberry jam that goes in our fruit tart,
we're going to start with some strawberry purée.
We're going to place this into a pot.
Bring this to a simmer.
And then we'll combine together apple pectin.
Apple pectin is extract from the seeds
from the apple and, sometimes, the skin as well.
It's reduced into a powder and it's
going to be mixed with the sugar.
This will set our jam.
So here we have our strawberry purée.
We're going to add a little bit of lemon juice.
I think a little bit of acidity is always good
so it gets down the sweetness.
It's a good balance--
and a little bit of rum.
I always like to spike up my jam by adding a little bit,
a little touch of alcohol.
I think it always enhance a little bit the flavor
of the fruit and make it taste a little bit riper.
So the purée is now heating up, so it smells like fresh
strawberries.
And it's very important to keep on stirring
it a little bit, always medium heat
so we don't burn the bottom of the pot.
Once the purÃ©e is hot and starts simmering,
this is where we're adding the mix of sugar and pectin.
So very important to always mix the pectin with the sugar.
If you don't, you'll have little pieces of pectin
that is not fully dissolved.
We're going to sprinkle this into the jam very gently
and keep on stirring.
As this cook, you will see the entire jam thickening.
It's going to come to a boil.
And for this, the very important step to know
is that the more you cook it, the more you
boil it, the thicker it's going to get.
One thing to be careful of is that when the jam starts
boiling, never stop mixing.
Otherwise, it will stick to the bottom of the pan.
I always hear people saying that they use fruits
that are going bad to make jam.
I don't believe in this.
I believe that fresh fruit, when they're really, really ripe,
should be used to make jam.
There's a lot of beautiful fruits during the summer.
We can easily do a peach jam, or a blueberry jam,
strawberry jam.
And in winter, I will do a more compote
versus jam, more apple compote, or pear compote, quince.
Those go very well, as well.
After just a few minutes, the jam will be cooked.
It'll be thicker.
And one other thing I used to do when I was at home when I first
started learning how to make jam is
that I used to put a little bit of jam
on the counter like this.
Just wait for a second.
So we're going to pass our finger through it
just after a few seconds.
If it doesn't come back together,
you can see the texture, and you can
tell if the jam is set enough or not.
If it looks a little bit loose, you can always
cook it a little bit more.
So when the jam is done, I'll just place it into a bowl
and put it in the fridge.
You can use it pretty much right away.
As soon as it's cool, it's set.
The most important stat, you let it rest a little bit,
just enough to cool down.
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