Tomato Jam

While I did not plant anything this year, last years Sun Gold cherry tomatoes decided to take over and replant themselves. They are coming ripe now, and I just found myself with 3/4 of a pound of cute little fruit sitting on the counter. As I am not much for raw tomatoes and the wife is in the south of France for the next week I thought that I would cook them up somehow. That is not a lot to work with so I decided to try a little tomato jam.
After a bit of browsing I settled on Mark Bittman's rendition as it had the least sugar and seemed to most straight forward. The first thing that I did was reduce the amount of sugar further and switch unrefined muscobado for the white stuff. Reducing the amount of sugar made some room for some basalmic vinegar, for another flavor boost. I ground the cumin, cloves and some SE Asian cinnamon with a mortar and pestle along with a chile pepper thar was dried from the garden a few years ago. This is starting to taste promising, butt I have another idea that I can not shake- a sort-of-relative gave me a jar of Apple Pie flavored Moonshine back in April, and I am sorely tempted to add a glug to the mix!
What do you think? Insanity? Guilding the Lilly? A rational choice?

I read and re-read your post, and I didn't see any alcohol in it until the mention of the 'shine. Is that correct? If so, the 'shine is needed, desperately. And I don't know how acidic your balsamic is, but I can't hardley eat cooked/stewed tomatoes without a healthy (perhaps obscene) amount of lime juice and chunky salt, but that's me. I say do it.

It does have lime juice, be I neglect that? It is in the original source recipe, as is the salt.

Tomatoes, muscobado sugar, basalmic vinegar, freshly ground cumin, clove and cinnamon; chile pepper, salt, apple pie moonshine, fresh grated ginger.
I think that covers it!
Cooked until it's sticky.

Oh baby! You're talking dirty!

That sounds fantastic.

That jam sounds good - if your apple pie shine is anything like the stuff I get you could cut back on sugar even more. Another thing I like to do is when balsamic is on sale I stock up and reduce it down to a syrup. Reduction brings out those sugars as well. Hell you can put it on ice cream.

Mike9 said:

That jam sounds good - if your apple pie shine is anything like the stuff I get you could cut back on sugar even more. Another thing I like to do is when balsamic is on sale I stock up and reduce it down to a syrup. Reduction brings out those sugars as well. Hell you can put it on ice cream.

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Really??!! I have to go try reducing balsamic. I can't even imagine what that would taste like.

Reduced balsamic doesn't sound tasty to me, but I've never tried it, and I've seen it done lots of times, yes, even on ice cream. It's evidently pretty popular.

Carl said:

Reduced balsamic doesn't sound tasty to me, but I've never tried it

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I recommend trying it before passing judgement Carl. Seriously - it didn't sound right to me either at first, but it made sense in my mind from a quasi, 4th dimensional, flavor point of view. Now it's like: "do you have any of that stuff?"

I find with acidy foods, they are much better with age. sometime, the pickle that is too sharp today, will be smooth and right-tasting with rest.

Tomato jam . . . on a crostini with a slice of anchovy and a shaving of pecorino. I have to make some before the end of the season.

Mike has the right idea!

Shallot red onion champagne. Vin sugar fluer de sel vitbris pectin