Citrus Strawberry Jam

We flew back from Italy on Saturday. I'm sad that vacation is over but excited to have returned to lovely spring-y weather. I'll be blogging our delicious Italian meals eventually. You have to give me some time to sort through photos and come up with some clever things to say. In the meantime, this week is going to be all about a tea party.

First, I'm sharing a deliciously fresh tasting strawberry jam. The addition of lots of orange and lemon zest makes the jam taste incredibly bright, like you're just eating freshly picked fruit.

Ingredients [yields 1 pint jam]:
2 pints strawberries
2 teaspoons orange zest
½ teaspoon lemon zest
¼ cup orange juice (from ½ orange)
¼ cup sugar

Start by lopping the greens off of the berries and quartering them.

Add the berries to a saucepan and then zest the orange and lemon.

Squeeze in the juice from half of an orange.

And add the sugar to the pot as well.

Place the pot onto medium heat and mash the ingredients together.

Let the jam boil for exactly 5 minutes. If you're worried about the consistency, you can do some gel tests - use a cold spoon (kept in the freezer) to rapidly cool a few drops of jam and check the thickness.

Cool the jam and then pour into an airtight container. Refrigerate and use immediately. If you are into canning, you can do that, but this is such a small batch, that seems unnecessary.

Slather the jam onto a slice of bread (or a bagel or scone or muffin or graham cracker, what have you) and enjoy.

Like I said, this jam is incredibly fresh tasting. It's basically like eating fresh sliced berries.

Here's the recipe page: