Over at Lavender and Lime, Tandy has set a Weekly Food Challenge to cook using citrus fruits. Anyone who pops over to my blog regularly will probably have noticed that I use a lot of oranges in my cooking, particularly salads, so I felt inspired to take part in my first ever challenge!
I´m not sure if you´re allowed to submit two recipes, but I recently put up a post for one of my very favourite salads, Ensalada Cateta, so I´m putting that one forward too!
However, I also thought I´d like to try something different and as I´m in jam making mode this week, I had a little play around with ingredients. After the visit from my friends from the UK last week I had a few limes left over from a Mojito session, so I took it from there.
I love pears, but tend to either eat them as they are, or with cheese, or poached in wine. How about trying a chunky, spicy preserve instead? I could eat it on bread or toast, or serve it, almost like a soft quince jelly with cheese or, finally, as a sweet option drizzled over creamy vanilla ice cream.
In the end I decided to marry the pears with lime juice and fresh ginger, and I have to say I was thrilled with the results. Just a hint of the tang of lime and the warmth of the ginger combined with the fresh taste of the pears. Pears contain a lot of water so I cooked the preserve for about half an hour for the quantities given below on a gentle boil. The final result left me with soft pear chunks which still held their shape and a jelly like syrup.
I used the following:
500g of pears (peeled weight) chopped into small chunks
250g sugar
A piece of fresh ginger (about 3cm in length) peeled and grated
The juice of two limes
For the method I used, please see either my Ruby Jewel Jam recipe or my Summer Cherry Jam recipe. This quantity gave me two medium jars of preserve. I do hope you enjoy it, it has an almost autumnal taste to it – I think it must be the ginger!
Chica Andaluza 