Pear and Pecan Jam
Deer oh Dear
There are quite a few deer roaming about the city, and normally we try and ignore them even though they impact the gardens in various ways. A few days ago the Block twins discovered that while nipping off the lower leaves of our pear tree, the deer had yanked a branch right off the tree!
Rescuing Pears
I suppose this is called natural pruning…
Chopped
The pears are still too small and unripe for eating, but it is a good excuse to try and replicate some heavenly jam that our friend the Dollhouse Lady gave us a couple of years ago. If you tried to make jam with ripe pears it would turn into gritty mush.
Jammed
The main ingredients on the label were pears, walnuts and a pinch of an unnamed spice.
We didn’t have walnuts so we substituted pecans. We found various recipes with pinches of various spices, and decided upon Cardamom.
Our jam is a bit darker than the original, but this is the jar from the original jam from our friend, so the twins hoped it would lend some magic!
Tea Party – Yeah!
The twins assembled the ingredients for a taste-testing tea party…
Butter, Jam, Toast
…including a petit pot of butter, the Pear and Pecan jam, some toast, some tea and some friends and a sweet quilt to sit on…
Joy
…Everyone thought it was perfect!
Our recipe, cobbled together from various internet sources and adjusted to the ingredients we had on hand:
(makes about five cups of jam)
3 1/2 lbs of unripe pears
small amount of water (1/4 – 1/2 cup)
2 cups of sugar
tiny pinch of salt
juice and grated zest of one lemon
3/4 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 cup of Agave syrup
1/2 cup pecans chopped fine and with the loose husks sieved away.
Put the lemon juice into a bowl with the water. Peel the pears almost completely, core and chop them, placing them into the lemon-water and turning them over after each addition so they don’t brown. Save a handful of the pear peels.
Heat the pears and lemon-water on the stove at medium heat until the pears are translucent. Add the sugar, salt and the pear peels and heat until it achieves the sheeting stage for jam. Remove the pear peels, and add the lemon zest, cardamom and pecans. Bring back to the boil, and then put into jam pots. Our new favourite jam!!
Thank you Dollhouse Lady for the original pot of Jam!!!
Quimper Hittys 
Good sleuthing, Quimper Hittys! Sounds like a culinary success!
It was very good, though I say it myself…No doubt the assistance of the block twins helped, not to mention the magic jam pot!
P &P Jam…sounds very delicious. And the post today is very sweet, itself!
Thanks! We had fun with putting together the post, but now I think we will have to go read Pride and Prejudice while sipping tea and eating toast and P&P jam….
Ah, yes, sweet ingredients for a lovely tea.
Very sweet, especially the friendships…but the girls were very careful not to drip jam or spill tea on their dear little quilt!!
Great “paring” of the Hittys with a pear party. Leave it to them to turn an unfortunate browsing mishap into a fun gathering. Those little teacups and plate on that wonderful wee quilt is picture perfect. So lovely to see Zipporah out and about with Min, Gilly and the twins.
Zipporah doesn’t travel much but she did want to pour tea at the P&P picnic party!
what a “sweet” series of photos. We have made a version of this jam before and will add your recipe to our file. Thank you. Love seeing the girls enjoying themselves.
The girls enjoyed whole experience…Agathe and Opal were extra pleased with themselves, and the rest of us enjoyed the fruits of their labour!!
Oh DEER! The last summer that we were living on our acreage, the deer ate every single nanking cherry! I was so unimpressed! Oh, Deer…. oh dear…..
yes, oh dear and oh drat, but we were glad that we were nudged into trying to figure out the jam recipe!