Saturday before Christmas and I am in deepest darkest Essex. My friend has asked me to help her make some preserves and I was more than willing to help. I have never made jam before , I had up until this point had the weird notion that it was only the preserve of people with garden. Silly thought really.

Anyhow my friend had a Nigella recipe that she had been using for sometime now and it had seems to have worked. So I spent the first part of the time chopping up chilli (sans gloves) and pepper.

I discovered the ingredient that is sugar jam, essentially sugar and pectin (I feel like I have lived such a sheltered life!). I learnt how to sterile jam jars in the oven.

And so by the early evening we had multiple jars of beautiful red jam. They just looked amazing and the taste – out of this world!

Reference:Chilli Jam