tomato jam

A month or so after bookmarking Luisa's version of Mark Bittman's tomato jam I had some leftover tomatoes from making Yotam Ottolenghi's shakshuka and decided it was jam time.

I was a little wary of following Luisa's lazy-person canning tip (just boil the jars for a while to sterilize them, then dry them out, fill them with hot jam, close them up, and turn them upside down for a while, and you should hear the sound of the jars sealing themselves as they cool) but I gave it a try, figuring worst-case I would just refrigerate the jam once it was cool and eat it up quickly. But, sure enough, there was the unmistakable sound of jar lids popping as they sealed in the kitchen about a half an hour after I filled them. Wild! I will eventually get up the nerve to give hot water bath canning a try (it doesn't sound terribly hard or anything), but I was pretty pleased with my first canning experiment.

As for the jam itself, I was somehow expecting it to taste more savory than it did. Make no mistake, this is jam. It's sweet. But it's also got a more complex thing going on than blueberry or blackberry jam does. There are definitely some spicy, savory notes to it, and as long as you eat it as you would any other kind of jam it'll be a lovely little surprise. My favorite thing to do with jam is put it on bread with Frischkäse (Neuchatel cheese, in the U.S. -- lighter than regular cream cheese), and tomato jam + Frischkäse, pictured above, is one seriously delicious combination. I've promised my third and last jar of tomato jam to my friend Ann, and I had better get that package in the mail sooner rather than later. Otherwise, it's going to be a jam-free package.