Caramelized Tomato Jam

I had originally planned to make this jam, but somehow didn’t have enough green tomatoes, so I threw in a few red ones.  And then, I think I might have scorched, I mean caramelized, the jam.

Whatever happened, the jam is good.  We had some with cheese sandwiches tonight and I had a bit on toast with almond butter for breakfast.  It worked both ways!  Ideas for this jam include:

• put it on top of yogurt
• bread, butter and jam
• savory jam thumbprint cookies
• a glaze for vegetables/tofu/whatever

Here’s the recipe, enough for 2 pint jars.

Caramelized Tomato Jam

Ingredients:

• green and red tomatoes, enough to equal 2lbs roughly chopped
• scant 1 pound sugar
• zest and juice of one lemon
• 1 vanilla bean, using the seeds scraped out
• 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped

To Do:

1. Combine everything in a very large pot, stir and bring to a boil.
2. Bring it down to a bubbling simmer and let it cook down until it reaches a jam-like consistency (about an hour or so), 220F on a candy thermometer is the general rule.  Once it gets past 200F, things will start to move quickly, so keep an eye on it and keep stirring.  I think this was my mistake – I turned to clean some dishes and BAM, the sweet smell of caramelization was upon me.
3. Spoon the jam into sterilized canning jars and proceed to give them a hot water bath for 10 minutes.  Let cool in the water and remove.  If you don’t want to go through the trouble of canning and think you’re up to eating a lot of this jam, store it in the fridge for up to two weeks.

We also spent $5.95 at the grocery store tonight – 4 rolls, 4 limes, romaine, cheese and a small head of red cabbage.