At the bottom of our garden are two rhubarb plants. I transplanted them, together with a rosemary bush, from my late father’s vegetable plot. The rosemary succumbed to a late harsh frost a few years ago but the rhubarb plants continue to thrive and, if I remove the weeds from around them, are good croppers. The challenge each year is what to do with the crop. Rhubarb tart and rhubarb and custard have become staple fare but not everyone in my family likes rhubarb. Just as I now turn our annual crop of pears into a syrup, I was anyway looking for a way of avoiding the imperative of eating everything straight away when I stumbled (as they say) upon a recipe for rhubarb and ginger jam and decided to give it a go. The recipe is very easy. Wash and cut the rhubarb into pieces, layer it with sugar in a bowl, pour lemon juice over everything and leave to stand for eight hours. By that time, the rhubarb has ‘expressed’ itself. Place a fair-sized, bruised piece of ginger amid the rhubarb in a muslin bag and bring the mixture to a vigorous boil. When it ‘sets’ (after about ten minutes; test using the back of a cold spoon to see when the liquid turns syrupy), ladle the jam into warmed jars and Bob’s your uncle. As the picture shows, the result was seven jars of delicious jam (proven by the fact that half a jar went already at tea time).
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