When all of France was concerned about its future within the European Union one recent, beautiful Sunday, I was busy with a much more worldly concern: picking ripe cherries before they were all pecked away by my feathered rivals.

We have two cherry trees in the yard which bear plenty of fruit during this season -- one produces big juicy fruit, which turn nearly black when ripe, the other a crop of smaller, bitter ruby-red cherries.

I prefer to eat them naturally up in the tree, but when I get tired of that they will be transformed into bitter-sweet clafouti, a cherry flan. If any are left over, they usually end up as confiture -- which the bitter cherries called griottes are particularly excellent for.

Recently, I read a Japanese e-mail newsletter article that said that confiture -- the French word for jam -- is different from ordinary jams and refers to something altogether more delicate and sophisticated.

Yet there is no secret about it; derived from the verb confire (to preserve), confiture is the simple art of conserving fruits with sugar (have you eaten confit de canard? It means "duck preserved in its fat").

If there is any difference, maybe it's in the way people consume it. French people seem to love jam. At least they eat lots of it, and in more varied ways -- in sauces, with cheese, etc. -- than simply slathering it on bread.

While excellent orange marmalade and strawberry jam are an eternal pleasure for many, new kinds of jams are becoming increasingly popular in France. Christiane Ferber, dubbed fee des confitures (jam fairy), probably leads the trend with her original, sweet collections such as Confiture de Madame, made with cherries and rose petals.

In the region where I live, there is a jam wizard whose products are receiving widespread acclaim. Philippe Mordelet (e-mail at chutneyconfiture@free.fr) makes jams using only ripe, organic fruits in season and reduced amounts of carefully selected cane sugar. He produces the most amazing recipes imaginable.

Even if some of his concoctions -- orange and lavender, banana and star anise, green tomato with vanilla and verbena or even chocolate, orange and pepper -- may sound weird, they can taste awesome. My favorite is fraise (strawberry) with mint and black peppers, which is only produced in spring.

This season, I tried to make a jam from one of Ms. Ferber's recipes, gelee de pomme aux fleurs d'acacia (apple jelly with acacia flowers), for which I needed 1.5 kg of Granny Smith apples, 1 kg of sugar, a lemon and a whole basket of acacia flowers from the garden.

If you have time, homemade jam is always easy to make. Apart from remembering several key rules such as not making too much at a time, waiting until the jam reaches 100 C, etc., jam making depends mostly on your imagination.

After picking the acacia flowers early in the morning when they are at their freshest and most fragrant, we sorted them out, bunch by bunch, keeping only petals and stamens. Then I cooked them quickly in some previously prepared apple juice and waited three nights before cooking them again.

By the way, do you know a simple yet efficient way to sterilize homemade jams? Heat the pots in an oven at 140 C for 20 minutes, and as soon as you have poured your jam into them, close the lids and just turn them over. Keep them like that until the jam has completely cooled. They will easily be good for a couple of years.

My confiture? Finally I've got four little pots of golden acacia jelly, each containing the goodness of beautiful spring days and with a distinctive hint-of-honey taste.

I'd welcome any comments or opinions, in Japanese or English, about my column. You can write or fax me at The Weekly, or e-mail me at jtweekly@japantimes.co.jp

The Japan Times Weekly: May 14, 2005
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