These days I find myself looking for comfort from sweets. It’s Carolyn here today and what I hear from others, I’m not alone in my cravings. Mother Nature must have anticipated our longings, because she has provided us with some natural sweets. There are many species of palms and the fruits are usually sweet. Some like dates are really succulent; others are rather dry.
I was cooling off in a friend’s swimming pool, when round orange fruits were bouncing off a beautiful palm tree next to the pool. I couldn’t resist biting into one and found it fibrous with a large seed but really sweet. It had some of the tropical flavor of a mango, a touch of lemon, and another element, sort of dusky, all its own. My friend said it was a Pindo palm. I gathered a bag full.
The Pindo Palm fruits sometimes hide inside the tree.
At home, I felt the same excitement of discovery I felt years ago when I first started playing with unusual plants and fruits. It turns out lots of people have been using Pindo palm fruits and sometimes it is even called the Jelly Palm. For my jam, I decided to combine the Pindo juice with some peach and mango. And since everything was already so sweet, I decided to use Pomona’s Pectin so I could use way less sugar. I discussed Pomona’s Pectin in a previous post here.
Here are the palm fruits in my kitchen. I started experimenting.
Pindo Palm Jam
For palm juice
2-4 cups of Pindo palm fruits
Water to cover
Using a large saucepan, simmer the palm fruits in the water until soft, about 15 minutes. Cool. Then plunge in your hands and squish, squish, squish until the fruit is separated from the seeds. It will be very soft and sort of dissolve into the water. Place a strainer over a large bowl and strain the liquid. Return the residue to the saucepan, add some water, and swish the fruit residue around to get the rest of the fruit. This second rinsing will recover a lot more juice. You can use a cup of the juice for the jam. Use the rest for a drink, straight or with sparkling water or combined in a cocktail.
This is what it will look like when you squish the fruits into the cooking water.
For jam
1 soft ripe mango
1 soft ripe peach
Approximately 1 cup palm juice
2 tablespoons bottled lemon juice
2 teaspoons calcium water
½ cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoons Pomona’s pectin powder
Cut the mango flesh from the seed and chop finely. Do the same with the peach. Put chopped fruit in a 2-cup glass measuring cup and add palm juice to bring it up to 2 cups. Transfer fruit and juice to a saucepan. Add lemon juice and calcium water.
In a small bowl, combine sugar and pectin powder and stir well.
Bring fruit mixture to a full boil over high heat, stirring well. Slowly add sugar-pectin mixture, stirring constantly for 1 to 2 minutes to dissolve sugar. When jam is at a full boil, turn off the heat.
Ladle into 3 half-pint sterilized jars. Refrigerate or cover with water and boil for 10 minutes. If you are new to canning, you can find full instructions for how to do this many places on-line.
Here are two jars of jam and a center pint of Pindo Palm juice that we’ll use in cocktails. I had three jars of jam but gave one away before I took the photo.
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If you are interested in edible wild plants of the Southwest and Southwest food, check out my books Cooking the Wild Southwest, Delicious Recipes for Desert Plants, The New Southwest Cookbook, a compilation of recipes from the Southwest’s top chefs, and The Prickly Pear Cookbook, with great recipes for both pads and fruits. And remember Eat Mesquite and More: A Cookbook for Sonoran Desert Foods. In September, I’ll have a new title: A Desert Feast: Celebrating Tucson’s Culinary Heritage. There is more information about my books at www.cniethammer.com.
Buy copies on line or order from your favorite local bookstore. They will love you for it.
Savor the Southwest: 