Tayberry Jam

    So a couple weeks ago I visited my friend's PYO in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, West Green Fruits. There I discovered a entire section dedicated to hybrids (crosses between blackberries and raspberries). After diligently trying each type of hybrid berry I settled on the Tayberry. Named after the River Tay in Scotland, these berries were created by Derek L. Jennings of Dundee in 1979. They were sweet and fragrant and basically just tasted awesome. I had intended to get some boysenberries or loganberries, but the Tayberries were just so much nicer that I couldn't resist. I picked about a kilo (one heaped full punnet) and gladly paid for my spoils. As I wasn't at home I had to wash and freeze my berries at my in-law's so they would keep until I got home. I wouldn't really recommend this, as it makes the berries go all mushy and messy when they thaw. But since it's a four hour drive from Hampshire to Sheffield and we don't have AC in our car, it was really my only option.

    Once I got home I got out my jammy bible and had a sift through it, hoping to use a recipe for Boysenberry Jam, but to my dismay I didn't find one! I could tell you how to make jam out of all sorts of strange and wonderful things, but hybrid berries are not given their fair due in my Jam book. So I had a quick flick through the recipes for Raspberry and Blackberry Jam. You would think these would be almost identical, but they're not, blackberries have much more natural pectin then they're red cousins, so less lemon juice and sugar are needed for the jam to set than with raspberries. I decided to get creative and use a combination of the two recipes to sort out my Tayberries. turns out I got it about right, the jam set and tastes good anyway. Here's my recipe.

Tayberry Jam

1 kilo (32 oz / 2.25 lbs) Tayberries
2.5 cups sugar
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice

    I started by washing the berries and making sure all the bits of leaf and stems and bird muck was all of them. I usually do this in my pasta strainer under the running cold tap. Once I wash them I weigh them, to see how much sugar I need. Since I sort of made this one up as I went along it was lucky I had exactly a kilo of fruit, otherwise the recipe would be really hard to convert for larger quantities. Then it's into the pot they go with the lemon juice and sugar.
     I cooked them gently on medium heat and gave them a mash with my hand potato masher just to break them up a bit. Now, I like my jam seedy, I think it's a nice texture and adds a little flavour, but if you don't like seeds then you'll definitely need to strain these berries. So instead of adding in the sugar and lemon juice straight away, gently cook the berries to soften them, mash them up and then pass them through a food mill or course strainer to get rid of the seeds, then add the sugar and lemon juice.
    Then it's pretty much like any soft fruit jam process. Cook gently until the sugar completely dissolves and then turn up the heat and bring to a boil. Stir it almost constantly so you don't get any sticking to the bottom of the pot and burning. Keep doing this till a drop of the jam mounds or skins over on a chilled dish. This took about 15 minutes in my case, pretty similar to raspberries, nice a quick. pour the jam into some sterilised jars and pop on the lids, let it set at room temperature for a few hours and it's good to go.
     I got three smallish jars of jam for my kilo of berries, so total cost per jar would probably have been somewhere around £1.80 per jar, not too shabby if you ask me. And let me tell you, this stuff tastes so good it might just put you off any other jam forever. My house smelled so good while I was cooking it that my husband came down begging to let him try some (he couldn't, it was boiling hot, I did let him have the spoon when I finished though). And the taste is heavenly, it has the texture and sweetness of blackberry jam, the acidity of raspberry jam and an aroma almost like a rose or a really sweet ripe citrus fruit. it is definitely my new favourite. We've been trying really hard not to just eat it straight from the jar by the spoonful!
    Needless to say I'll be back at West Green picking these berries again next summer. I wish we lived closer so I could go back for a couple more punnets straight away, we'll have to ration our three jars to make them last all year. I'm also excited to try some of the other hybrid berries they have and see how they turn out in jams, and if they taste significantly different or not. Based solely on my pre-picking taste tests, I think there's a lot of potential for some amazing flavours.