Pears are probably my favorite fall fruit. I love ripe pears that are soft and juicy. We found a wonderful recipe in the Blue Chair Jam Cookbook. Rachel Saunders suggests introducing vanilla and elderflower liquor into the mixture. Mike and I really loved the sound of that. Both of us grew up in the tropics (Hawaii and Southeast Asia respective) and we both love elderflower because it reminds us of lychee, a fruit that we both loved as children.
We made a few small tweaks to the recipe. Instead of Bartlett pears, as Saunders suggests, we used Bosc. We also used a little less lemon juice than she suggests, because we found the acidity was overwhelming the other flavors. We also didn’t use any sugar at all. Apart from that, we kept pretty close to the recipe, which is out of character for us.
Saunders recommends using very ripe, soft pears. Unfortunately all the pears we had were not particularly soft yet, so we put them in the oven at low heat for an hour to soften them up.
We then peeled, cored and cut the pears. We put the pears in the pot and added a small amount of water.
We used two vanilla beans. Mike sliced the pod and removed the seeds. Then placed both the seeds and the pod into the pot.
We added a rather large quantity of the elderflower liquor (3/4 cup), in small amounts over the course of about an hour. Then we turned down the heat and let the pears simmer for another two hours, stirring occasionally. Note that we didn’t use any sugar. The pears and the liquor seemed to provide enough sweetness for us.
Cooking the jam slowly for over less heat seems to be the most effective approach. The flavor of the various ingredients and the fruit itself seems to get stronger with more time.
This jam is my favorite one yet! I say that every time, but this one is particularly wonderful. It is rich and really holds the flavor of the pear. Delicious!
Ingredients
- 11 cored, peeled Bosc pears
- Two vanilla pods (separate the seeds from the pod and put both in the pot)
- 3/4 cup of elderflower liquor (we used St.Germain).
- freshly squeezed lemon juice from 2 lemons
