Ginger, where for art thou?

On the weekend I had somewhat ambitiously bought several kilos of pears. Massive, statuesque buerre boscs. It almost seemed a shame to cut them up. Pear and ginger jam was not going to wait though so on Wednesday night I found myself making jam. I’m slowly getting through the jams, I only have a couple left. The husband is starting to get slightly concerned about the sheer volume of jam we now own – especially when neither of us eat it.

The recipe required preserved ginger which I took to be stem ginger – the type you buy in syrup. Do you think I could find stem ginger anywhere? I went through everywhere I could think of from the classy delis to the dodgy asian shops – no ginger. I ended up buying ginger preserved in honey, at an exorbitant price, which I assumed was going to be close enough!

Pear and ginger jam seems ok. It isn’t entirely set, a little on the syrupy side. Some of my other jams have almost set hard like wine gums so it would be fair to say that the consistency of the consistency of my jams is not great.

While I was waiting around for my jam to set I decided to also turn out a couple of treats for work – Apple cheese tarts and jam tarts. Apple cheese tarts are entirely more tasty than they sound – think lemon curd but with apples. I think it could catch on perhaps?!? There was quite a lot of apple cheese left over so I gave the husband a spoon and the pot - before dinner even– I’ll make a terrible parent one day.
Jam tarts – little flaky pastry shapes cut out, cooked with a little dot of jam placed on the top when they come out of the oven. I used gooseberry because our garden shed is groaning under the weight of gooseberry jam. Reviews were pretty good, they certainly looked quite pretty. More of a left over pastry type affair than making specifically but good all the same!