I often get lucky lately with friends and family handing me small bags of produce and them waiting for “I’ll can it and give you a jar” response from me. I have been “eye-spying” the kiwi at the farmers market since we are almost passed the season and I haven’t tried to do a jam or something with it’s fantastic flavor. On Tuesday, a familiar face came to my office and plopped a bag of the lovely fruit right on my desk. It was fate and when I asked if they were for me or the office to share, the answer was just as I figured. “Can you do something with these?” Oh you bet I can!
For the last few days I have been investigating recipes that use kiwi to see what spices and other ingredients they are using. Always mindful of not overpowering the flavor I found a lot of choices but waffling until I put the cut up fruit in the pot, opened my pantry of spices and saw the new Vietnamese Cinnamon from Penzey’s that came in on Monday.
Now a new trick I have is to take a little of the spice and dip a small piece of the fruit in it to see how the two taste together. The velvety flavor of the Cinnamon, which also tasted like it had a bit of vanilla, was a great combination and just enhanced the more “banana” quality I find in a kiwi. It changed the color of the kiwi mixture but the taste and consistency after a bit of using the immersion blender was “spot on”. Here is the recipe:
Cinn-full Kiwi Jam
10 Kiwi fruits – peeled, halved, sliced (3 cups)
1 ½ cups cane sugar
½ T. Vietnamese Cinnamon from Penzey’s spice catalog
In a bowl place prepared kiwi and ½ cup of the cane sugar, cover with plastic overnight to macerate the kiwi. You can skip this step if your kiwi are super ripe.
Macerating fruit brings out its juices and enhances its natural sweetness with minimum effort. Sliced strawberries, peaches and nectarines as well as raspberries and blackberries respond very well to maceration.
In a dutch oven or non-reactive pot place kiwi, remainder of sugar, and cinnamon and heat till boiling. Stir frequently. After 15 minutes the mixture will start to get a bit thicker. You can mash the kiwi more by using a masher or using an immersion blender breaking up some of the pieces. By doing this your recipe will get thicker. Continue to cook to the desired consistency.
Sterilize two half pint jars, lids and rings. Ladle mixture into jars and process in water bath for 10 minutes.
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