Sweet strawberries and tart rhubarb make a great vegan jam. Pink pepper also surprises our palate with its spiciness.
This vegan strawberry jam recipe comes from a friend of my great-grandmother, a cookbook author from the very beginning.
THE GIFTED BARONESS
Today, Giulia Turco Turcati Lazzari would be described as an "influencer". The baroness from Trento (north Italy) wrote about travel and natural medicine, the arts and cooking in a women's magazine under the pseudonym Jacopo Turco. She was particularly passionate about the last two things. Giulia's salon was a meeting place for musicians and writers. She wrote her own stories and, as an enthusiastic cook, she collected thousands of recipes from all over Italy over the years. Around 3000 were finally published in 1904 under the title: "Manuale pratico di cucina, pasticceria e credenza".
REGIONALITY CONNECTS
Giulia gave a signed "kitchen manual" to her friend, my mother's grandmother. That's how the recipe book came into our family. Alongside her contemporaries and companions, Pellegrino Artusi and Olindo Guerrini, who dealt with Italian cuisine from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Giulia Lazzari can be counted among Italy's most important gastronomes. Her and Artusi's works form the first synopsis of modern, very regionally influenced Italian cuisine. A contribution to the unification of a nation that has always valued good food.
RHUBARB TIME!
The slightly bitter flavour gives this strawberry jam the right acidity.
Did you know? The fruity rhubarb is actually a vegetable.
In northern Italy, it is mainly grown in Lombardy and used in compotes, jams, cakes and liqueurs. The leaves are not digestible due to their high oxalic acid content. If you want to keep the stalks for longer, they should be wrapped in a damp cloth and stored in the fridge like asparagus. Today, rhubarb is one of the few fresh foods that is only available for a very short season. So we grab it and cook the incomparable taste into a jam jar.
📖 Recipe
Vegan strawberry and rhubarb jam with pink pepper
Equipment
- 3 jars for jam 220 g each
Ingredients
- 200 g rhubarb
- 200 g strawberries
- 200 g sugar, approx.
- 1 teaspoon lemon, juice only
- 2 teaspoon pepper, pink
Instructions
- Clean the strawberries and remove the green stalk. Rinse the rhubarb, dry and slice thinly with a slicer. For thicker stalks, remove the coarse outer fibers. Slowly steam the rhubarb in a pan without water until the liquid has evaporated and the rhubarb is creamy. Stir in the strawberries and lightly crushed pepper and cook for a few minutes. Pass the fruit through a sieve.
- Weigh the fruit puree again and add exactly the same amount of sugar. Then boil down while stirring until the jam is thick.
- Add the lemon juice to the jam just before bottling, as it preserves the jam. My grandmother recommended 1 lemon juice per kg of rhubarb.
- Carry out a gelling test. Fill the jam into sterilized jars. Seal the jars tightly, turn upside down for 3 minutes and leave to cool
Nutrition
RHUBARB COMPOTE
To make a rhubarb compote, steam the rhubarb without water, as you would for jam. Season to taste with cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon. Sweeten to taste, do not strain.
OTHER RHUBARB JAMS
Replace the strawberries with blackberries and the pink pepper with grated ginger. Or add raspberries and a little real vanilla to the rhubarb. Pure rhubarb also makes a delicious jam. In Italy, we add the juice of 1 orange to 1 kg of rhubarb to round it off, and vanilla is also popular: cook 1 opened pod per kg of rhubarb. The exotic sweetness of the vanilla complements the tart rhubarb perfectly.
Buon appetito!
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