Sunday, July 1, 2007

What berry?


Tayberry!

For the last two weeks, I've had my eye on a newcomer at Alemany Farmer's Market: the tayberry. Named after the river Tay in Scotland, this is a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry. Picture, if you will (and you'll have to, because my camera is broken and I've yet to buy another) a shorter, slightly redder loganberry, and you've got the tayberry.

I bought three quarts at $2.50 each. As I wanted to preserve the tart-sweet balance of the fruit, I didn't add as much sugar as usual: only a 1 1/4 cup per cup of juice and pulp. I ran the cooked fruit through a food mill to grind the seeds, which was recommended by a Chowhound contributor as a way to stiffen the pectin-free final product. As (almost) always, I added a bit of lemon to brighten the color and hold the jam together.

At the market, I noticed a guy running around taking photos of the produce. He was Marco of Marco's Farmer's Market Watch, a blog that I follow about San Francisco markets. It's a delight to live in a city with so many people interested in cooking with local, seasonal ingredients.

(Thanks to the lovely Sonya of People Reading, who supplied the above photo.)

3 comments:

Kennethwongsf said...

Mistress of Jam:

You ought to know that Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot are presently in consultation with each other (the former sucking on his signature Calabash pipe, the latter twirling his curled mustache). They're wondering who provided the mysterious picture of the Tayberry jam jars currently displayed on this page.

Perhaps they should call in the CSI team (they'll have to decide soon enough if it should be the Miami, Vegas, or New York crew), because there are partial fingerprints on the jars. Are you the culprit? If so, whose camera did you use?

The plot thickens; so does the jam.

colleen said...

Why, that would be the lovely Sonya Worthy of http://peoplereading.blogspot.com/. In addition to being a crack furniture-mover and biscuit-supplier, she's a noted jam photographer.

Kennethwongsf said...

I should have known. I've always considered her to be one of the movers and shakers in the San Francisco literary scene, but I now know she plays a similar role in the jam scene.