Seedy

You'd never know I strained out more than half the seeds before cooking this raspberry jam - it's still mighty seedy. In fact, I was amazed at the amount of seeds that three little boxes of berries could produce. Never mind, I still love raspberries almost as much as I do strawberries so I was eager to turn my boxes of fresh, ripe fruit into jewel-toned jam.

Some of my best discoveries happen when I come a cropper in the kitchen. This time, it was the lemon juice I wanted to add to the raspberry purée along with the sugar. When I sliced open my lemon, the whole inside was a nasty, spoiled mess, completely unusable and a different kind of seedy. Desperate for just a little tartness, I thought of the bottle of very expensive sherry vinegar languishing in my cupboard, an impulse purchase long ago that I had never even opened.

So, I opened it. Poured just a drop on a spoon with some of the raspberry purée just to confirm that the reality tasted as good as I imagined it would. It was terrific, complementing the raspberry flavor and cutting through some of the sweetness of the sugar. Home run.

Out of three little punnets of dark, tiny perfect raspberries I got two small jars of jam. I used 2 cups of raspberry purée, 1 tsp of sherry vinegar and 1/4 cup of sugar; if you want to know my method, go here. What didn't fit into my two little jars became a coulis that I forced through a much finer strainer, leaving all the seeds behind that time. I wrapped it carefully and put it in the fridge. It is the seed for some other delicious as-yet-to-be-invented dish. I wonder what it will be?