Tomato Chilli Jam

This jam sounds stranger than it is. Actually, it’s just a cross between ketchup and sweet chili sauce, which probably doesn’t sound very appealing either. Hmm, it’s nothing pretentious, it’s just a surprisingly nice condiment for cheese, (toasted) cheese-sandwiches, chicken, pork, eggs or anything you can think of. Combines perfectly with coriander. The original recipes tells you to only blend half of the tomatoes and add the other half in small cubes afterwards, but I like my jam to be smooth, so I blend all tomatoes.

RECIPE

500g very ripe tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
4 red chillies (or more or less)
2 t finely chopped ginger
30ml fish sauce
300g caster sugar
100ml red wine vinegar (I used Chinese red vinegar)

• Blend the skinned, whole tomatoes in a food processor along with the garlic, chillies, ginger and fish sauce until the mixture reaches a puree consistency. I blended it for about 2 minutes. (because you need the pits in the tomatoes for their pectin, we won’t sieve the mixture and that’s why I prefer to skin the tomatoes. If you’re less fussy, then don’t bother)

• Pour the mixture into a pan together with the sugar and vinegar. Bring to the boil and slowly stir. Once the mixture has reached boiling point, reduce to a simmer and cook for 30-40 minutes, stirring from time to time to prevent sticking. But in the meanwhile, taste to see if your chillies were hot enough or whether you need some more fish sauce of vinegar. I added a Madame Jeanette, cause my chillies lacked heat.

• Pour the mixture into a warmed sterilized jars (about 2 x 250 ml). When cooled to room temperature, close the jars and refrigerate. You can keep this jam for quite some time. Weeks if not months.

From: The Sugar Club Cookbook by Peter Gordon.