Tomato Jam
August 20, 2010

Ever since I went to the tomato restaurant in Tokyo, I have been thinking about making tomato jam when the right season returned. Now the tomato season is here and the local farmer's market was selling a box of tomatoes for $12. I canned and freezed most of the fresh tomatoes for the winter but I saved some to make some salsa and jam.

You can find many tomato jam recipes and many of them are savory jams which you can use as a condiment for meat dishes. I'll try that next time, but this time, I made jam with only three ingredients: a traditional sweet jam for a morning toast.

Yield 1 small jar

Ingredients

1.5 lb tomatoes
5 oz sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Method

[Pealing the tomatoes]

1. Boil water in a medium sauce pan. Prepare a large bowl of ice water. With a sharp knife, cut an X on the bottom of each tomato.

2. Put two to three tomatoes in boiling water for 10 to 15 seconds. Boiling more than 15 seconds makes tomato mushy. Fish the tomato out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon and put them in the ice water. As soon as it has cooled down, immediately take out and start pealing from where you cut an X.

3. Remove the stem and cut the tomato in half. Then dice into small pieces.

[Making the jam]

4. In a small sauce pan, cook the tomatoes over medium-low heat until almost all the juice has evaporated. Make sure to stir occasionally and clean the side as you cook them.

5. Add sugar and lemon juice and cook for another 10 minutes until it's thick.

6. Put the jam in a sterilized jar. Keep it refrigerated.

* The output is only a very small portion because it is meant to be eaten as soon as possible. It can be kept refrigerated only for a few weeks at most.