By the end of last week I had my bomb of fresh Fruit Salads with curds, and I am happy to announce that I got used to the heat.
Some days ago it rained a bit early mornings and since that its even more hot, (38 Celsius and I guess the humidity is easily over 80%).
My husband is still in the fruit salad craze, because he can't get used to the calidity.
Sometimes I am wondering who the local between us two is, the same question arises whenever we are in Europe where I can't stop complaining about endless, blistering cold.
While my husband was fixing my dads old Motorbike outside, I was standing in front of our wood oven, frantically trying to gain a bit of warmness.
You can imagine!
Since i was finished with fruit salads for some time and I needed anyway some fresh jam for my breakfast, I decided to make a tropical mix fruit jam.
The last few months we were still living of the few jars of Strawberry Passion Fruit jam I had prepared in December.
My sister even took one for my parents to Austria when she came to visit us.
This time i needed a few more flavour dimensions and I had to use the fruits in the house.
O.O Fresh foods tend to get quickly foul these days again, I blame the humidity for that, maybe our small fridge but not my taste bud change!
This recipe was inspired by our family trip back then in 1997 (or was it 98?).
I was around 10 and my parents, my siblings and I had gone to visit my mums friend on the french island Guadeloupe for 2 weeks.
That was one of the most memorable vacations ever!
We stayed in the southern part of the island (Basse Terre) where we were the only foreigners ( we didn't see one white face roaming around at that time).
I remember the market very clearly.
At that time too I had to write a diary (homework for school) so I had documented about the markets there (yes, already back then!).
I remember tasting my first fresh Papaya and mango and learning about some exotic fruits such as Love Apples and Black Bananas.
The market ladies were kind of singing while attracting customers to their stalls, it was magical!
One day in the future I ll organize the pictures from Europe, so you ll be able to see what it used to look like, what seems like ages ago.
I tasted my first tropical fruit jam in Guadeloupe.
Banana and mango jam was so unusual for us, even for my parents, but we are a family who likes to discover and try out new things and foods, so we went all into it!
My mum had noted down her friends favourite mix fruit jam, she used to make it before but had stopped it for a while now.
The time was right for me to reinvent it.
Actually the recipe what I am sharing with you today is pretty much the same like the original, except I have added Kiwis as a twist.
There is no Pectin sugar in this recipe, just simple sugar is used, Apples and a small amount of finely chopped lemon skins, which helps in setting the jam.
Here we go with the recipe so that you can prepare your own batch at home. =)
Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas with us in the comment section further below!
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Ingredients
Instructions
- Keep the Raisins to soak in the rum, a night before you intend to cook the jam.
- The next day prepare to clean and cut all the fruits. Remove the Pineapple skin by cutting it all around off, remove the ring core of the pineapple too, because that part seems to be causeing irritation in some peoples throats. I kept the core in the recipe, thats my favourite part of the pineapple. Cut the pineapple into small chunks.
- Rinse and cut a slice out of the Papaya. Remove the skin with the black seeds as shown. Cut out the flesh from the skin and dice it.
- Rinse and peel the skin of the apple, quarter and remove the core of the fruit. Cut it into small slices.
- Peel the tangerine, remove the white strings and cut out the seeds with a fruit scissor.
- Half the Grapefruit. With a knife cut out the flesh from the sponge mass all around then cut out the flesh partitons. I usualy help myself with fingers too, except if I have a special Grapefruit spoon. Part the chunks with your fingers into smaller pieces.
- Peel the Kiwi, quarter and cut into slices.
- Peel the Banana and cut into thin slices.
- Quarter the Pomegranat and pick out the red flesh/seeds.
- Peel the ginger root and chopp it fine.
- Add all the fruits to a Pot and heat it up on a slow flame.
- Allow it to heat up a bit and directly add in the sugar and the Raisin Rum mix. Stir well!
- Continue to stir (actualy you will have to do that till the jam is ready cooked). The fruits will loose a good amount of liquid after a few minutes of cooking.
- Now chopp the pealed lemon zest very finely and add it together with the juice to the pot. Keep on stiring every now and then. It should never stick to the bottom of the pot, attention here!
- Once the fruits cooked for over 10 minutes, you can smash them with a potato masher gently.
- Cook it on slow heat for 45 minutes and the last minute to a rolling boil.You can test if the jam is ready by dropping hot jam on top of a cold plate from the freezer, if it rins, then its not ready but instead it should be thicker.
- Sterilize the jars by boiling them in hot water with the caps. Remove them from the water and directly fill in the jams. Drop some Rum inside the cap, that will help to give your homemade jam a longer life. Seal it well and keep the jars in a dry place, to make sure that no mold grows!
