Monday, August 26, 2013

Fat Pork Jam


It has been a fruitful holiday. We have been stuffing our faces with mangoes, West Indian cherries, yellow plums, and guavas. Wars are being fought over the few remaining sugar apples. 



One  uncommon fruit which we found on a drive through the country side was fat pork.  Bite into it and the unusual texture of it's interior, white pulp will clue you in as to the name. The taste is insipid and to be honest it doesn't inspire a second bite. It looks it but doesn't taste like pork fat. The weird, floury texture is only very mildly sweet with a flavour that is barely detectable. The rest of the Caribbean calls these fruit cocoplums. It is something that I remember foraging as a child, although now I cannot for the life of me remember why! 



Foraging, apparently it's a thing. Back when I was a child. It didn't have a name. It was just something we did. Mom and Dad you might want to look away for this part. Sampling little bits of wild, edible, plants and their fruits was a childhood game which was meant to gross out friends. 

Does anyone remember eating the transparent seed coat of the Pride of Barbados seeds? We called it Dead Man's flesh. Yum. There is that 'ick' factor that's so gosh darn appealing to kids~ especially boys.  Reportedly, all parts of the Pride of Barbados plant are toxic but we didn't know that as children. It's a wonder any of us survived childhood! How about sucking the nectar out of the Ixora flowers or eating 'cheese' (pollen) from the stamen of hibiscus flowers? So tell me are there any strange things which you ate as a child that have you questioning your sanity today?

Back to present day and the point of me buying a large quantity of a fruit that my son says tastes like mashed potatoes. 

He is not wrong.
I don't much care for it myself but I had heard that one could use this fruit to make jam. 

How was it? Well, we all liked it. While not likely to replace our all time favourite strawberry or guava jams, it was pretty decent jam.  I would describe it as having a mild rose flavour with slightly woodsy notes.  Part of me wants to call this by its other name and say cocoplum jelly. That sounds a lot more sophisticated and grown up, doesn't it? However the kid in me...

I can't help myself - the shock factor of offering someone a spoonful of Fat Pork Jam is proving to be just too irresistible. 






Fat Pork Jam
(yield about 1 cup)
*No actual pigs were harmed in the making of this jam.

Ingredients
75 fat pork (cocoplums)
2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 cup sugar

Method
Put the fat pork into into a deep pot filled with water ~ just enough to cover the plums. Boil for about 3 mins. . After allowing it to cool, use clean hands  to smash the fruit and remove the seeds. Pass the remaining pulp through a sieve removing the larger bits of pulp and skin. To this fruit sludge, add 2 tsp lemon juice, 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon and 1 cup of sugar. Cook until jam is set. Click here for useful tips for knowing when your jam is ready 

17 comments:

  1. How interesting...This fruit is new for me. I wish I could have a taste of it as well as the jam made from it. I love its vivid color!

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  2. Se ve muy rico y delindo color...ya me había extrañado probar grasa de cerdo jajajaj son extrañas ciruelas,en su color se parece al dulce de guayaba (recibí un regalo de ecuador),abrazos.

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  3. Fat pork and cocoplums are new to me but I would love to try the jam that is so seductively spread across your toast!

    Growing up our usual after school snack was white sandwich bread, spread with margarine and topped with white sugar. I seems kinda gross now. But if I wasn't so spoiled and that was all there was to eat I'm sure I'd have something different to say!

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  4. Fat pork jam??? - You got me! I was trying to see if there is any pork used to make this jam...

    Glad that no piggies are harmed :)

    Zoe

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  5. What interesting fruit you have there! I'd love to try this jam-one day! :D

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  6. Fat pork? Now that's a crazy name that would have me scared to try it! But by the same token, I'm terribly curious and would have a hard time resisting. I can understand why you were so drawn to it, despite the uninspiring taste! Jam makes anything great, so that was a brilliant plan to turn it into something worth savoring.

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  7. the title is so misleading, i love it! i've never tasted a jam i didn't enjoy, and i'd love to taste this unique fruit.

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  8. Haha, I totally thought this jam would just be ground up pigs. There is definitely a shock factor in the title :p But I would love to try some of this, this sounds so unique

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  9. Fat pork jam sounds fun and something which I never tried before! Wow, this looks great too!

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  10. this is so clever and cute! The deliciousness is killing me. What I wouldn't give for some of this on a hot buttery biscuit!

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  11. Fat pork jam looks so intriguing. And yes, the title was misleading ;)

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  12. Wow....this takes me back to childhood days and the compulsory stops to buy these on our way back from the beaches of Rampanalgas and Toco. Being Muslim, we enjoyed teasing our folks when we got home that we just stuffed ourselves on "fat pork" !

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    Replies
    1. Lol, dgman. The shock factor of the name does make for a good laugh:-)

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  13. Haha my dyslexia had me thinking that this was pork fat jam the entire time. What a really pretty fruit -something I would really like to try in the future!

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  14. Love the jam..vibrant and fruity! Not sure if I like the name though:-)

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