Cooking royal gooseberry jam with cherry leaves

Jam is a traditional dish in Russian cuisine, hostesses prefer to cook it differently: from one main ingredient (berries, fruits) or from some berry-fruit combination. Recently, as a rule, chefs of expensive restaurants, striving for originality, are conducting various experiments, preparing it from nuts, herbs (dandelion jam today will not surprise anyone), from fruit peel (zest). Practice shows that most often the original is the dish that is prepared from ordinary, everyday ingredients.

Today it turns out that we, in pursuit of exotic, we forget about our, originally Russian. Long since truly royal pudding was considered gooseberry jam, which is less in demand these days and, from this point of view, is much inferior to, for example, strawberries or raspberries. Despite the fact that this berry is available in almost every area. But nowadays gooseberry is something inconspicuous, almost a weed.

And in vain, because this berry is also rich in vitamins, like strawberries, but, unlike it, it also contains iron, which is responsible for hemoglobin. The gooseberry berry endowed with magnesium and potassium is useful in the presence of vascular diseases, and also improves the functioning of the circulatory system. Folic acid in the gooseberry prevents premature aging. And in general, gooseberry improves kidney and gastrointestinal tract.

As you can see, the benefits to the human body are significant, besides, the berry does not lose its beneficial properties during cooking. These circumstances justify the desire of some housewives to resume the original Russian traditions in cooking and use gooseberries for harvesting for the winter. Most often they make of it jam, which was once considered to be the favorite delicacy of kings.

So, it turns out that gooseberry jam is not only useful, tasty, but also, thanks to the bright green color of the berries, very beautiful. If we consider the marked benefits separately, then no one doubts the benefit of the product. It can be safely called the “storehouse of vitamins,” which allows even in winter to enrich the body with the beneficial substances contained in the gooseberry. Thanks to the vitamins, micro- and macroelements contained in it, gooseberry jam, not worse than raspberry, strengthens the immune system, gives strength due to the iron contained in it. In this way, In order not to suffer from avitaminosis in the spring, it is recommended to include gooseberry jam in your diet in the winter.

Harmoniously combined with other berries and spices gooseberry taste allows you to cook a delicious, truly royal jam, adding to it, for example, leaves of cherry. Thanks to this combination, the dessert takes on an unusually emerald green color (provided that green varieties are used) and a delicate cherry aroma, for which it became famous as the royal gooseberry jam with cherry leaves. In order for a dish to be considered kingly, it is necessary to take into account certain features of cooking.

It is not a secret that jam can be made from whole berries or from crushed ones. Some like to pass them through a meat grinder, while others prefer to use a blender for this. As for the royal gooseberry jam, it is unacceptable to cook it from whole berries, because they have a rather firm skin that, when cooked, remains whole with all its contents. Jam is obtained in the form of a liquid syrup with berries floating in it, resembling bursting “bombs” when they bite through. It is better to grind gooseberries in a meat grinder, then the jam acquires a uniform consistency, where the peel which has become a film will not float.

If you decide to make not just jam, but royal gooseberry jam, then you should take care of the leaves from the cherry tree. Leaves are selected perfect, without any flaws. This should be given special attention if it is planned to harvest jam for the winter - foliage with signs of diseases can cause fermentation. Selected leaves should be washed well several times and then scalded with boiling water using a colander. Since the leaves are needed for the preparation of flavored syrup, you should not allow stagnation of hot water during rinsing because of the possible loss of flavor. At the same time, it is also impossible to pour boiling water on it, since the procedure has a disinfecting effect.

As for the berries, the berries of the green gooseberry have always been used for the mentioned variety of jam, because they, unlike the red ones, have a sweeter taste. To make the color more emerald, it is recommended to choose slightly unripe berries, as the flesh of ripe berries gets a yellowish tint. You should not hope that the green color of the delicacy will become richer due to the greater number of cherry leaves - they have absolutely no effect on the color, but are only needed to add flavor.

To make the jam truly royal, it is necessary to pay special attention to the ingredients used to make a delicacy. Since the main ingredient is gooseberry, then we start with it. As you know, it is of two main varieties: red and white. And there is no particular difference as to which sort to use, since it only affects the color (from green berries you get emerald jam, and from red berries you get pink). But to prepare royal jam, as noted above, you need green, slightly unripe berries. The main thing is that they are not too sour, as the jam will turn out the same.

In the absence of other berries besides sour ones, it is recommended to add more sugar to the syrup, and the berries themselves should be passed through a meat grinder without fail. Otherwise, the jam will be a sweet syrup with floating, sour, unpleasant berries when biting (because of the dense rind, the gooseberry berries retain the taste well).

If your berries are sweet enough, then you can make a dessert with whole berries. The amount of sugar also needs to be controlled in order not to get excessively sweet jam. Experienced housewives recommend the use of under-ripe berries of sweet varieties for jam. Firstly, when cooked as a whole, they better retain their shape, and secondly, they give the product a pleasant acidity. But such a moderate balance in the regulation of taste between sour and sweet is within the strength of probably experienced housewives.

As for the leaves, then, of course, it is better to choose more or less young, growing inside the tree crown. This requirement is explained by the desire not to allow the jam, preparing for long-term storage, spoiled due to foliage with flaws. In addition, you need to understand the following: if cherry trees were processed during the season with any chemicals, then most likely, their use for making jam is strictly prohibited due to the possible accumulation of toxic substances on them. This is especially true when the treatment was carried out relatively recently (the allowable treatment interval before harvesting is 3 weeks).

Since the jam is called “royal”, made from green gooseberries, we will consider only the recipes of this product. Among them are the traditional and advanced.

We need a syrup based on cherry leaves, prepared from two glasses of water. The amount of sugar depends on the number of berries and is calculated: 1 part of the berry to 1.5 parts of sugar.

The number of leaves and the consistency of jam depends on your preferences. Since the gooseberry berries themselves do not have a pronounced aroma, its deficiency is compensated by the amount of cherry leaves. But it is not recommended to take too many leaves, as bitterness will appear in the jam.

Starting the preparation of jam is necessary with the processing of leaves. For one kilogram of gooseberry, we need the leaves of cherries from three sprigs of medium length. The specified number of leaves is filled with two cups of cold water and infused for 5-6 hours. After the required time has elapsed, we harvest the leaves using the same colander or skimmer. To the resulting tincture, add one and a half kilograms of sugar and one kilogram of pre-washed and gooseberry berries minced.

By the way, in order to preserve the taste of fresh berries to the maximum, you need to try not to digest them. For this boiling jam is cooked over low heat in 5 stages, that is, boiling - turn it off five times. The readiness of the delicacy is checked in such a simple way: it is necessary to drop the jam on the nail, if it does not spread, then it is ready. It can be removed from the heat and stored at your discretion: in the refrigerator or rolled up in sterilized jars. From the marked amount of ingredients, about one and a half liters of jam is obtained.

As for the leaves, the royal jam is represented by two main variations.

1. Leaves are needed only for the preparation of syrup, they are not put into the jam itself.
2. Not only syrup is prepared on the basis of leaves, they are included in the composition of jam.

The difference between the recipes is that the second case requires a smaller number of leaves, which may cause bitterness in the jam.

There are advanced recipes for royal gooseberry jam, which greatly diversified the taste of the traditional recipe. Although the basic recipe for this does not change. For the piquancy of taste, it is allowed to add to the above recipe kiwi, almond, orange or lemon zest, which are usually taken by eye.

Royal is considered to be jam, which has radiant transparency, moderate viscosity, and, of course, moderately sweet taste. You can use lemon or citric acid to give a sweet and sour taste to the dessert.

To learn how to cook royal gooseberry jam with cherry leaves, see the next video.