Saints Preserve Us

Having decided to make banana jam and secured a recipe from a trustworthy source, the time has come to admit outright an embarrassing personal secret, heretofore implied but not explicitly stated in my scribblings about fridge-a-lade and carrot jam.

I have never in my life vacuum-preserved a fruit or vegetable of any kind.

You heard me right -  difficult as it might be to believe, my existence so far has been utterly free of gingham aprons, cling peaches, jam pans, and all the other accoutrements of classic canning praxis. Of steam juicers, sterilization, wax seals, and Ball jars I know next to nothing.

In my current spirit of innovation, experimentation, and lifelong learning, however, I have decided to give it a whirl. My two new jamming books are chock full of detailed instructions for the novice putter-upper, enabling me to forestall the intimidating threats of bacterial invasion and botulistical outbreak. Having been pouring over theories and procedures for the last few days, I have decided that I have stumbled upon another one of those occult areas where practitioners propagate a certain mystique for their own complacent purposes.

Small-batch preserving doesn't appear to be all that difficult, frankly. In fact, it doesn't even seem to require much specialist equipment. I can use my biggest spaghetti pot to sterilize the jars; my round-bottomed stainless steel saucier to cook the mixture itself; a plastic chopstick for air bubble releasage (Japanese o-hashi are pointy, you know); and my best pair of rubber gloves for jar insertion into and retrieval from their infection-preventing sauna (I made a name for myself long ago with my remarkable asbestos fingers).

The trickiest part is the jars. You don't want to be taking shortcuts with those. I had been assured by Internet Experts that proper canning jars with rings and seals would be impossible to find at this time of year, but once again I was deceived. On a tip from The Diva, who knows all about such things, I presented myself at my local supermarket and was gratified to discover that they have canning supplies all the year round. I was directed to a little-visited corner of the produce section (little-visited by me, anyway) to find a veritable cornucopia of Ball jars in a variety of sizes and configurations. Of course, that didn't stop me from ordering online some extra-special and gorgeous European jars with olde worlde style for gift-giving and the like. A girl requires a certain amount of fanciness, after all - in her confiture if not her couture, if you get my meaning.

So far, the most recondite piece of information to which I have been made newly privvy is that jams, jellies, preserves, and conserves (words that I tend to use interchangeably to avoid those writers' bains, repetition and redundancy) are all quite different things. Who knew? Below, I offer a definition of each as a public service to readers who are curious about such arcana:

• jam - crushed or chopped fruit cooked with sugar until it sets, often made from a single fruit
• jelly - gelled mixture of sugar and juice, clear or opaque (OK, I knew that one)
• preserves - whole or sliced fruits in syrup or soft jelly. UK English for conserves.
• conserves - jam made from several ingredients, which may include two or more fruits and other ingredients such as nuts

Call the contents what you will, everybody I know will soon be flooded with home-made jars of seasonal scrumptiousness - organic where possible, utterly natural, chemical and preservative-free. Should the canning bug really take hold, I may be handing out JJP&Cs on street corners soon, inundated as I no doubt will be with marmalades, chutneys, ketchups, fruits-in-syrup, and confits of every description.

Keep an eye out - I'll be the crazy gal carrying a cardboard carton full of Bormioli Rocco jars and wearing a gingham apron.