You Know It's Autumn (#4)

...when you try to make some grape jam.



Last year's attempt was quite a disaster. I tried to learn from the experience by getting rid of the pips early in the process.

I tried two different approaches. The first was recommended by Kaag's mother. She boils the grapes to break them and then passes them through a sieve.



This worked just fine. However, I also went for a bit more sophisticated method by using a Steam Juice Extractor. Here the grapes are first put into a sieve.



The sieve is then into the extractor, which is placed onto the stove.



The steam juicer consist of two compartment. In the bottom one, you have to put some water in order to get the steam. The fruit come into the top part of the container. Then the fruit juice will drip into the centre pan where it will be extracted through a tube.

Hard Boiled Cat Pissers

For once, a kitchen experiment failed. I tried to make gape jam, which was not one of my best planed projects. But who was I to know that this is so hard to do?



I used fox grapes (vitis labrusca), which Toño helped me to pick. We Swiss call them also Americano or Chatzenseicheler (cat pissers). These grapes have a distictive taste which make them perfect for jam, but unfortunately, they also have huge pips. I only realised this when I'd finished the first round of jam.

I then decided to pick the pips from the next kilogram of grapes. No pigeons at hand, this Cinderella like task took almost two hours. This can't be the solution. I could make jelly, but I somehow prefer jam to jelly. Any suggestions?