My birthday is arriving and Leo that I am it is announced to loud fanfare of trumpets, drums and bagpipes. Three quarters of a century is nothing to sneeze at either. I never thought I'd make it to 21, yet here I be, my ego and me.
I had planned a trip, but all of a sudden I noticed my Damson tree was loaded with fruit, and probably would ripen exactly when I would be away. I cancelled the trip and now toe tapping for the ripening of these little jewels hanging from the lateral branches.
Before the Camp Fire debacle, I had harvested and made Damson Cheese which was going to be small holiday gifts for friends and family. It was merrily melding away the day the fire devoured our lives, and everyone elses in our small town of Paradise.
I noticed a few damsons on the ground that the birds had taste tested, not quite ripe yet and I am sure it will be a full on manoeuvre to snag enough fruit to make my cheese.
https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipe/damson-cheese/rlikn79yi
Damson cheese is a very old recipe. It isn’t a cheese in the dairy sense but a thick fruity paste; a throwback to when the term ‘cheese’ was used more loosely. It is mysteriously inky and black and should keep for years.
Ingredients
2 kg (4lb 8oz) damson plums
1 kg (2lbs 4oz) sugar
Wash and sterilise five or six 300 ml (10.5 fl oz) straight sided jars
Perserving time six months.
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F).
Place the damsons in a cast-iron casserole dish with a well-fitting lid. Bake for about an hour until the juice runs freely and the stones become loose. Push the fruit and juice through a sieve. Collect some of the stones, crack them to remove the kernels and add these to the pulp. This seems like a lot of faffing, but they add a strong almond flavour, although it will still be delicious if you skip this step.
Weigh the pulp and put it in a jam pan. Add 75 g (2¾ oz) of sugar for every 100 g (3½ oz) of fruit pulp. Bring to the boil over medium to high heat, stirring often and turning the heat down if it’s really raging, for about 40–50 minutes until it’s set when tested.
Put the cheese in straight-sided jars: this is so it can be turned out onto a plate when ready to serve. It’s best to keep for 6 months before use. When it starts to shrink away from the side of the jar it is ready.
Sterilisation
This is the big one. In the age of refrigeration we’ve often forgotten how much mould and yeast thrive when left unchecked. You can preserve things through excluding oxygen (tight-fitting lids), introducing an acid (pickled foods), and by adding enough sugar or salt. But even then it’s important to start with really clean implements, and to store things in sterilised jars with sterile lids. So wash your storing jars or containers really well before sterilising.
The heat method
(a dishwasher is a good place to start)
Heat kills bugs, and bugs can cause your preserves to lose quality, or even go off. If you want to sterilise just one bottle, or a few jars, you can place them in a saucepan of cold water, on their sides, making sure they’re full of water and submerged. Put their lids in there too. Bring this pot to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. This will kill just about all the bugs you’re worried about. The only downside of this method is that it is a little tricky to take hot bottles from a pot of boiling water, though there are special tongs on the market to help you. A good thing to note is that hot sauces and jams will crack a cold jar, and this method allows you to have your jars pre-warmed ready to pour in a hot conserve.
Dishwashers, with a hot rinse cycle, also sterilise the jars, so that could be an easier method.
Be sure, when dealing with hot jars, not to put them onto a cold surface or they will crack. Always put them onto a wooden board. Cold jars will also crack if they have very hot things put in them, so warm the jars a little first, using warm water or similar.
Damsons are particularly good for making plum paste because they have an intense tart and spicy flavour that goes very well with cheeses. This makes damson paste a better choice than sweet quince pastes for cheese boards.
