All In Good Company

I've been pondering over testing this jam for a couple of weeks now. I could not for the life of me find any recipes for radish jam on the internet which, as a number of past experiments have taught me, usually points to my ideas being a little too wacky to actually work. So as you can imagine, I was a touch hesitant to try something which everyone else thought would turn out horribly.

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Apple and radish have been together for a long time. Apple likes things such as vanilla, celery, walnuts, cloves, five spice, ginger, cinnamon, ice cream, crispy puff pastry, etc. Married couples generally like the same things although there are the odd exceptions every now and again. In this case, when apple goes away for the monthly Original Recipes event, radish has cloves and ginger to keep it company.

Unfortunately radish doesn't contain as much pectin as apple so you'll need to add a little extra. I wasn't able to locate a store that sells pectin, I did find something called Jamsetta though. It's pectin with sugar added as a carrier to prevent clumping or something I suppose. Sugar is listed first in the ingredients list of two which means that Jamsetta is atleast 51% sugar. From shaking it around on a plate it looks to be anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 parts pectin to sugar. If you don't live in Australia or buy shitty Jamsetta and use real straight pectin you'll need to adjust the recipe to something like 4 or 5 grams. If you have a food processor (which I don't) you can blitz up the radish first before cooking instead of slicing then using a blender afterwards. You'll also need a thermometer.

Daikon Radish Jam

300 g daikon radish
40 g fresh ginger
5 whole cloves
25 g ironbark honey
210 g castor sugar
10 g Jamsetta
3 g citric acid
1 g salt
350 g water

Peel and julienne daikon and chop ginger into thick slices.

Throw everything into a smallish pot and bring to the boil.

Simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove ginger and cloves and blend until as smooth as possible.

Return to pot and simmer, stirring with spatula until it reaches 105ºC.