Jamboree

Moments after the farm owner picked me up from the bus station she said, “I have a shit load of watermelon that is going to go off pretty soon so you’ll probably be making a lot of jam.” Watermelon is my favorite food so the only thing better to me than an organic and freshly picked one is a shit load of them, and I hoped I would get to graze to satisfaction before jam-ifying them. Upon arriving at the farm I saw that indeed there was a shit load of watermelon, but there was an even bigger shit load of a larger melons, lighter and more monotone in color, and those were what would soon relocate to shelves of sanitized recycled jars. “These are the makatons,” Janet told me. “Makaton jam on toast is lekker.”



I asked her how to spell makaton and she shrugged saying, “I don’t know because they’re really called kafirlemoen (kaffir watermelon in English), but we’re not supposed to say that anymore. Makaton must be some Boer word but I don’t have a cookin’ clue what it means, fucking Boers.” Kaffir, if you are unaware is a derogatory South African term for a black person. And Boers, if you are unaware are the South African settlers of Dutch descent. Janet, white and of British descent, had pretty much something derogatory to say about every race, ethnic and cultural group in the country, including her own. It struck me as a bit incongruous to the crunchy organic lifestyle, but then again I could never figure out if she really hated everyone or if she just had a bizarre way of showing affection. And if you find the term “kaffir watermelon” nonsensical in addition to offensive, I learned that makaton is indigenous to the Karoo and was (maybe still is) traditionally grown as cow fodder. It is unbelievable tasteless; if you could turn water to a solid at room temperature, it would taste like makaton. So at the time the most sense I could make of the moniker is that at its christening, the melon was considered to be fit only for consumption by animals or black people. Although while googling around trying to find the correct spelling of makaton, I came across this blog posting which explains how (and somewhat why) there are several South African plants and animals whose names begin with “kaffir” and that it may be an (outdated) geographical description.

http://bornagainredneck.blogspot.com/2006/09/we-are-all-kafirs-now.html



Makatons are hard as rocks. Preparing them for their two day soak in a slaked lime solution was like being asked to remove the outer layer of a boulder with a vegetable peeler, hack it into attractive cubes and stab repeatedly with a fork (for maximum slaked lime penetration). The lime is meant to soften the melon and does so to no discernible degree. Perhaps makaton’s most amazing property is that despite the fact that I couldn’t taste a drop of sweetness in any granite-esque chunk I sampled, it managed to leave an unbelievably sticky residue on my hands, hair, clothes, the counter and the kitchen floor, which I tracked onto other floors via my sticky-squeaking sneakers.



Two days later I made makaton jam for eleven hours. Janet met me in the morning and instructed me to rinse the melons and use the lime solution to water the grass. Then she explained how to make the syrup I would cook the melon in. And with the sugar: water: ginger: melon ration in my head, a kitchen scale and a pen and scrap paper, I set to dealing with bucket after bucket of melon. It seemed simple enough; boil the sugar, water and ginger, then simmer the melon in it. When the melon chunks get soft, cool in steel bowls and dump the next batch went into the syrup pot.



Things seemed to go smoothly at first. The air in the kitchen turned cloying and steamy; the melon chunks were rectangular and browning. But then something strange started happening. The fruit turned brittle and the syrup began to bubble like a swamp in a 1950s horror movie. Attempts to stir the fruit with a ladle created boiling strings of sugar lava oozing all over the counter. Blobs fell off the ladle and solidified mid-drop, then snapped like icicles. I was fascinated and slightly wary as hot sugar causes the most horrific burns, worse than grease, worse than probably anything but steam. The syrup was no longer glossy and clear and the whole thing started to resemble a cesspool that froze over trapping animal dung mid-float. But, oh my, it was delicious! The melon chunks appeared fossilized but had a delightful caramelized crunch. The syrup, now toffee, was amber-like in its ability to capture pieces of ginger as it hardened. It was accidental home-made candy and I was in heaven.



BUT. It was not jam. It was the least jammy substance I could have possibly concocted with the given ingredients. Janet was out and she wouldn’t pick up her cell phone. I left the pot sitting to further congeal while waiting for her to appear before finally realizing she may not return anytime soon, so tried to extract the melon remains, toss them in a bowl, soak the pot and whip up a new patch of syrup. When Janet finally did come home she was aghast, yet bemused. She said the problem was water evaporating out of the syrup making the sugar content too high and causing it to crystallize. The problem was obvious enough as was the solution of adding more water after a certain period of cooking. On the other hand, I had been told to follow the ratios exactly and the subtext of “don’t fuck with it,” seem to bar the much needed replacement of water. Janet told me to chill. She salvaged what was salvageable and told me to chuck the rest (although I pocketed a few pieces of the “ruined” melon) and she started another pot on the stove.



As she measured a kilo of fruit, she noticed a white powder clinging to the melon. “Is this melon in lime or water she asked?” I told her it was lime and she cursed and started rinsing. Apparently this was not good. She put the melon in bowls of fresh water and my heart started pounding. Apparently this was what I was supposed to have done to the five kilograms of fruit I had already cooked (not including the one kilogram we had just thrown away). And apparently Janet didn’t know that I skipped this step. Janet is a mite volatile and I still had a few weeks left on the farm so for several long moments it seemed wise to keep my mouth shut. One kilo of ruined fruit was clearly forgivable but I doubted another five would be. Then I started to worry that the lime was poisonous, or that it would make the jam go bad inside the jars.



“Janet.” I tried to not let my voice wobble. “Why’s that melon soaking in water?” “To rinse the lime,” was her expected reply. “Ummm. I didn’t rinse the lime from any of the other melon.” My voice got quieter and more wobbly. “I didn’t know it needed to be rinsed.” Her voice was scarily calm. She said, “I know.” The only response I could come up with was “oh.” Then she said, “It was the first thing I told you to do.” It certainly wasn’t. I became more confident. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t know. Or maybe I didn’t hear you correctly. But what will happen to the jam?” She shrugged and told me consuming a large amount of lime isn’t healthy but this wouldn’t be enough to do anything bad to the jam or the people consuming it. I hadn’t breathed for about a minute. I exhaled and apologized and she told me not to worry about it. She told me I could rinse the rest of the melon and then dump the lime solution on the grass outside. When I picked up the bucket and started hauling it outside I remembered. She had told me to rinse the lime off the melon. It was the first thing she told me. “Shit,” I said. “I remember now.” I started to profusely apologize for my second jam screw up of the day and she laughed. When I returned from lime disposal feeling sufficiently foolish, Janet left me with the rest of the jam to finish.



As my first batch post-disaster softened in the late afternoon, I brought a sample to Janet. She was on the phone so I silently held it out to her and she pressed it with a finger. She smiled and mouthed “yes.” A little happy noise escaped from her throat. She must have startled the person on the other end of the line because she said, “No, it’s the WWOOFer lady. She had a dismal morning making kaffir watermelon jam. . .” It was well past dark by the time the sterilized jars had been packed with jam, de-bubbled, sealed and wiped down, and the sugar-encrusted pots and ladles were soaking in hot soapy water. The thought of standing at the stove one more minute seemed unnecessarily abusive so I ate a baked potato from the microwave and a persimmon for dinner. And, lucky for me, there was one linty piece of accidental melon candy in my pocket for dessert. It was delicious.