Clearing the freezer and coping with gluts

My huge chest freezer has reached crisis point. The ice has built up and up, and unless the baskets are replaced in exactly the correct position the lid won't close. Like much of my house it's due for a declutter.


There are two main problems - all the allotment surplus that I freeze before it goes 'off' (and then forget about), and half-used bags of shop-bought things lurking right at the bottom.

So ... I decided that last month, I would make a real effort to buy no more frozen food. We'd eat the broad beans that have been sitting in there for years. Finish up the fish in sauce that we aren't really fond of. Put together all the half-used packs of bacon, prawns, and peas - and discover there actually IS enough for a meal.


I took out tomatoes and made passata, gooseberries for chutney, plums for jam, lemons to add to marrow and rhubarb marmalade.

Things were going well but then, just as the freezer looked clear enough to defrost, the allotment went into 'glut' mode. A few days of rain, followed by a few days holiday, meant it wasn't checked for a while, and the courgettes had grown into marrows. The greenhouse tomatoes started to ripen; the outdoor ones developed blight and had to be cleared.

Blackberries and autumn raspberries were ready to pick; as were the runner and French beans. Rhubarb decided to grow again, and apples started to fall from the trees. It's time to lift onions and potatoes, and possibly think about early pumpkins.

If only allotment produce would come along at a reasonable rate, as and when needed!




It's been time for a lot of inventive recipes - fruit with every breakfast, lazy trifle made from cold custard, blackberries, and yogurt, and cranachan made with yogurt (not cream).

And with this huge pile of marrows/courgettes to use more invention was called for. Marrow seems like an odd ingredient for jam but actually works well. Combined with an equal weight of rhubarb, and lots of frozen lemon skins it makes a tasty preserve somewhere between a marmalade and a jam.








In more traditional ways of using it we've had it roasted in lemon,  added to curry, pasta sauce, omelettes, goulash, and, last and definitely worst, stuffed. I still want to try a battered, fried recipe I was given, and the courgettes keep cropping so I may get the chance.

Beans, tomatoes (even the green ones) and surplus fruit have ended up in the freezer - it's completely full again but at least it's with this year's fruit and veg. Onions are hanging from the garage ceiling; potatoes are in bags in the cupboard under the stairs. People keep talking about stocking up for Brexit - I don't need to :)

Recipe testing - Hilaire Walden's Sensational Preserves -Hot Green Tomato Chutney

With the nights dropping colder, I decided last week to clear the larger green tomatoes from the allotment plants.... and then, of course, it's time to make chutney.

I've got a couple of favourite recipes and this time went for a hot spicy version from Hilaire Walden's Sensational Preserves. It's actually referred to as plain 'Green Tomato Chutney in the book, but I label it as 'hot' to differentiate it from the other green tomato chutney I make, and because the chillies and ginger in it make it hot!

As on previous occasions, I tampered with the recipe slightly, replacing cider vinegar with ordinary 'malt' and adding extra sugar. The recipe only calls for an ounce, which doesn't seem much at all - nothing like thw amount used in other recipes - so I upped it to 4. This year I used fresh green chillies (home grown) as called for, but previously I've used dried red ones.

The instructions only suggest boiling for a short time but this seemed likely to leave the veg rather chunky. I prefer a chutney with an almost puréed texture, so I cooked it all for slightly longer and mashed everything up. 

I wish there was a reliable way of predicting the ultimate amount of recipes like this, as I ended up with 2 jars and a bit left over - which never looks attractive.

Tomato day

 Despite the weather turning colder, I've a glut of tomatoes from the allotment - and no space in the freezer for them so I got out the saucepans to use them up - well some of them.

First - passata. I've been trying to avoid the fiddly sieving and leaving the pips in with most of this year's jarred tomatoes but I had lots of little cherry types that were best sieved to remove skins as well.

 Second - lunch. Minestrone with turnips, white beans and spinach.

 Last but not least, a huge batch of green tomato chutney.

The day's jars all lined up.

Two very different preserves with green tomatoes

I'm starting to pick green tomatoes from our plants at the allotment because the fruit is so heavy that the plants are breaking! This just ends up though with green tomatoes balanced precariously in a variety of bowls on the kitchen work-surfaces, so I thought I'd get busy and turn them into something.
First up, was a hot Green Tomato Chutney from Sensational Preserves by Hilaire Walden. This is recipe I've made up many times though it's a little hot due to the chillies in it.
Then, following the success of last week's Green Tomato and Lemon Marmalade, I thought I'd have a go at something similar but with a slight variation - Green Tomato and Orange Marmalade. The main difference was that, not having the same amount of orange peel to hand in the freezer, I started by boiling the tomatoes and peel in 1/4 pint of orange juice. Other than that the recipe was the same. It has a much sweeter taste than the lemon variety, being a little like apricot jam, though with bits of peel giving it a 'proper' marmalade texture.
So, two very useful additions to my store cupboard - the only snag is, without labels, can you spot which is marmalade and which chutney in the photo above?
 

Something totally different....

 I've tried making jams and marmalades with unusual vegetables before - pumpkins, courgettes and cucumber - but this year's surplus crop is green tomatoes. I can't leave them on the plants to ripen as they are too heavy and the stems are breaking.

I could make chutney.

But we eat more marmalade than chutney....

So....

 I found this recipe in Farmhouse Fare - a collection of recipes sent in to Farmers Weekly, so there are all sorts of useful ways of using up odd gluts of fruit and veg.

The only adaptation I've made is to add more lemon - about 4 in total from my hoard of leftover frozen lemons, instead of  'some lemon peel'.

 It's all boiled up and set much as any other jam and although it isn't the most appealing colour, it does taste of lemons rather than tomatoes and

the chopped up lemon rind gives it the appearance and texture of marmalade.

Autumn already?

The weather has turned Autumnal this week with cold nights and crisp mornings.
Inside seems to be following the same pattern as the round of Autumnal preserving gets under way trying to make good use of fruit and veg that will 'go off' if left. So often my cooking hinges around what I have available - no where more so than when it comes to making chutneys and marmalades.

I started with green tomatoes that had to be cleared from blight-stricken plants. They had no hope of ripening and were best used quickly. They were all shapes and sizes - 'normal' moneymakers, cherry tomatoes, large Roma plum-shaped and small Poire Jaunes - all mixed together with chillies and ginger for Green Tomato Chutney from Hilaire Walden's Sensational Preserves.

Green Tomato Chutney - quite hot!

Next for the pot was an overgrown courgette. My courgette marmalade recipe is loosely based on one for pumpkin and has become something I make most years.
The chopped courgette is cooked slightly then soaked overnight with lemon husks and skins, frozen leftovers from baking and such.













Nest morning comes the slow task of cutting the lemons into strips..







...then boiling up.

courgette and lemon marmalade

Lastly (for now) I turned my attention to the ripe tomatoes coming mainly from my parents' greenhouse plants. These could have been frozen quite easily but my freezer is starting to feel full. Last year I had my first real success with making and keeping passata so I thought I'd try again. For this first batch I decided to add some chillies for a bit of heat.

The tomatoes are cooked, sieved and bottled. Then the bottles are heated up for 10 mins and left to cool - at this point the lids should seal with a popping sound. One bottle worked properly first time; the other took several attempts and eventually I had to change the lid to be sure of a seal!

More weird - and not so weird - preserving.

Our first frost of the year this week so had to clear lots of things at the allotment - too many crystal lemon cucumbers and lots of tiny, tiny green cherry tomatoes - plus we picked up some windfall apples through Freecycle which won't keep for long so really need to be used - so it was time for the jam pan to come out again!

Having had an unexpected success with courgette jam, I thought I'd try the same recipe with cucumber. Basically 2lb peeled, chopped cucumber simmered with 3 lemons and enough water to cover.


When the cucumber's softened, squash with the potato masher. Leave to cool, chop the lemons into thin strips, then measure the pulp. Add 1lb sugar to pint of pulp and either boil to setting point straight away or leave overnight to soak first. The lemon is definitely softer if left overnight.

It looks and tastes like a lemon marmalade - and the first batch was such a success, I'm now onto a second (simmering right now!)






The tomatoes were a different problem - the normal sized ones went into chutney with some of the apples








but any chutney made with the tiny cherry ones would have been full of skins so I decided to try Green Tomato Sauce - a strange thing of my own invention but really a sieved chutney.




It doesn't look very appetising - I used granulated sugar instead of demerara because my sugar stocks were getting low but obviously the reason so many chutney recipes call for demerara sugar is to improve the colour and appearance. It contains a fair amount of chillies and I'm thinking of using it as a last minute addition to curries. It's not been tested yet though.







Last but not least, the most normal thing this week - apple and blackberry jam!

Green Tomato Cake

Having heard weathermen talking about the possibility of snow next month, I thought I'd start clearing some of the unripe tomatoes - and brought home 11lbs!
I started to use them by making chutney - there's a particular green tomato one that I like to have with cheese in a hot baguette - but wondered if there was any other way to eat them. I put out query on Twitter and a very helpful person sent me 3 suggestions - one of which was green tomato cake.
I'm never one to refuse a culinary challenge so decided to have a go - unfortunately the recipe had too much butter and far too much sugar, so I decided to combine it with Delia's bara brith recipe as follows :

In a bowl beat 1 egg with 4oz sugar, then mix in 8 fluid oz milk. Sieve 10oz SR flour and a teaspoon each of baking powder, ground nutmeg and ground cinnamon, into the mixture and mix well. Finely chop 12oz green tomato and add to mix.
Pour into a greased, lined 2lb loaf tin and bake at Gas No 4 for 50 - 60 mins

Then the important bit - tasting!
Surprisingly nice. It was lovely and moist from the tomatoes and tasted mainly of the spices.
I don't think anyone would identify the mystery ingredient as tomato - apart from one drawback. When cut into slices, you can see green chunks! Not the normal appearance of cake! Maybe we're too set in our ways about how cake should look but if I made up this recipe again, I'd bake it in small muffin or fairy cake cases.

using what you've got -green tomatoes and pasta

have been clearing out tomato plants at my parents and came home with nearly 4lb of green tomatoes. MOST of these have been turned into chutney but i was checking out other things to do with under-ripe tomatoes and thought I would try cooking them in some way for lunch. the problem with the recipes I found was that they seemed to finish with the addition of lots of double cream - this isn't something I wanted to do as I was looking for something low-fat. So this is what I came up with; put a slug of olive oil in a saucepan, add 8oz chopped green tomatoes and let them start to sweat. add a small chopped up onion and a crushed clove of garlic. while these are cooking put sufficient pasta in a separate pan and cook (ours was intended as lunch so only 4oz dry pasta for 2; adjust the amount to suit). cook the tomatoes for about 5 mins, they'll lose their bright green colour and turn khaki, then add a couple of slices of ham, either chopped up or cut into ribbons, and continue cooking till the pasta is nearly ready. drain the pasta and return to its pan. add the tomato mix to it and stir in 3 to 4 tablespoons of low-fat cheese spread. stir everything together and allow the cheese to melt slightly and coat the pasta.