Chive Vinegar

Here's another of those simple but wonderful ideas I've found on the web - chive vinegar. 

Simple, because all you do is fill a jar with chive flowers, cover with a clear vinegar (I used distilled, but cider or wine vinegar would work, and possibly taste less sharp), and leave for a week or so. 

By then the vinegar will have absorbed the oniony flavour of the chives, but more importantly it will have taken on their colour.  All that needs to be done, is strain and bottle it. So simple. Doesn't it look wonderful? I'm still struggling to come up with a use for it - I could add it to salad dressing but the impact of the colour would be lost. I feel it's best served in a decorative vinegar bottle (my mother had several 'cut' glass ones as part of fancy cruet sets) but I've yet to find the occasion.  

 

Raspberry Vodka

After a fortnight of soaking raspberries and sugar in vodka, it's time for straining and decanting back into the original bottle.

There was just a little too much to fit, so I had to sample some - and very nice it was. The colour's gorgeous too. It's definitely more of a success than my rhubarb gin which smells strangely of olive oil.

I just wish I'd thought to steam off the original labels!

When life gives you raspberries ...

 They say 'when life gives you lemons, make gin and tonic'. Well, life (or the allotment) is right now giving me raspberries - far too many of them.

Some have gone into the freezer to turn into jam at a later date but this autumn's crop has been so bounteous that I'd thought I'd experiment with some of it.


So, raspberry vodka.









4 ounces raspberries, the same of sugar and not quite the whole of a 35cl bottle of vodka - letting it sit, shake frequently, and wait for two weeks.
I've made blackberry vodka before, which was lovely, and rhubarb gin which was less so and needed interesting mixers. Hopefully this will fall into the 'lovely' category.
Fingers crossed for two weeks

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 :)

Bringing summer back to the kitchen

It's January so you can't expect the weather to be warm and sunny, but I always find it a good time, especially on a miserable rainy day, to raid the freezer and bring back the scents of summer to the kitchen.

First, my lazy version of passata. Frozen tomatoes are much easier to peel than fresh - drop them in boiling water and the skin falls off - then I just simmer them for a while till they're cooked and the consistency looks right. At this point, a more enthusiastic person might sieve the pips out. I don't mind them in soup or pasta sauces, so I don't bother with the fuss. I just pour the gloop into jars and boil to seal. The last bit always used to worry me - boiling a glass jar seems such a wrong thing to do - but, so far, I haven't had any accidents.




Then, a few days later, spurred on by the sight of stored apples rotting in their boxes, I decided to make jam. It's probably possible to use just apples but that doesn't seem a very exciting spread for toast or whatever, so I'd normally add some blackberries out of the freezer - this time, for a bit of variety, I used raspberries. I use roughly 2lbs apples to 1lb of other fruit, which I find works well. The jam tastes of the berries, but doesn't contain anything like the amount of seeds as jam made solely from them. It's more culinary laziness really.


We still have quite a few home-grown apples remaining, so I need to find some way of using them  - not cakes or puddings but maybe in casseroles with pork or sausages.

When life gives you courgettes ... make marmalade

If there's one surplus from the allotment that I hate, it's courgettes. There's only so many of them that you can eat (and to be honest I having been cooking much with the heat), and they don't freeze well.


 The only options left are chutney and marmalade - and we eat more marmalade.











It's weird, but simple, and does actually taste like marmalade once cooked. Basically, peel and chop the courgettes, getting rid of any seeds. Weigh them and put them in a jam pan with their weight in sugar, and leave overnight.
 For each pound of courgettes, add a lemon or two (I save squeezed out ones in the freezer) and a handful of frozen leftover orange rind. I boil these separately to soften, then cut up finely and add to the courgettes.



 




Next day it all just needs boiling up - gently at first to be sure the courgettes are soft (sometimes I mash them to avoid lumps) then quickly to set.

Passata and Pickles

I seem to be in non-stop preserving mode at the moment. If there's a fruit or vegetable that can be stored by turning into jam, chutney, pickles or whatever, I'm doing it.
I've already pickled our home grown onions, turned cucumbers into bread and butter pickle, made chutney with pumpkins and jam with apples and blackberries.


This weekend I've turned my eye to the stock-pile of frozen tomatoes, and cleared some space in the freezer by making passata. Mine's a rather lazy version,with no sieving required! I pour boiling water over the still-frozen tomatoes so I can easily slip the skins off, then boil them for half an hour or so till the fruit 'collapses' - and that's basically it. Once the jars are sealed, I've found this to keep almost indefinitely, but over winter, I'll use it in soups, added to pasta sauces, or poured over enchilladas.




Next I decided to tackle the courgette glut that's filling my fridge vegetable compartment. It's possible to freeze them but they always seem so limp and damp afterwards, no matter how they're cooked, but a couple of years ago I tried using them instead of cucumber in bread and butter pickles, and the experiment paid off. I think they might actually keep longer, which is good as I already have two jars of cucumber pickle to eat!
So, an hour or so salting, some hot vinegar poured over, and that's another batch of preserving done ...

Preserving time again

'In progress' chutney

Autumn's always the time of year for making chutneys and jams on a massive scale. Although sound pumpkins and apples keep easily enough, there are always damaged ones thatneed to be processed in some way, so ... out with the preserving pan - first to rescue a couple of butternut squash by making chutney, then to turn some damaged apples, with the help of blackberries from the freezer, into jam.

The finished chutney

How did we manage without freezers?

An allotment trip last week saw me bringing home bags and tubs filled with a variety of fruit and veg - tomatoes, runner beans, corn on the cob, peppers, beetroot, apples, raspberries, and rhubarb.

It's all good stuff, hopefully helping us eating a healthy, varied diet, and probably costs less than buying the same vegetables from a supermarket, BUT anyone with a vegetable patch, even the smallest, will know how crops always seem to arrive in a rush - one day nothing is ready to pick, the next there's a glut!

Most of our home grown crops won't be eaten fresh, so

having grown and picked it, now comes the dreaded task of preserving it somehow.

Some veg comes in handy ready-to-store packaging - one of the reasons I love pumpkins is because they store over winter with no effort; onions only have to be hung up somewhere dry and frost free; beetroot, carrots and apples will be fine in a cardboard box for a while.

There are still tricky things though - runner beans, peas, corn, any and every kind of soft fruit.
I know there are lots of clever ways involving salt, sugar and vinegar to save produce, and have something to eat in a few months time. I could make cordials, jam, chutney, passata, pickles, marmalade, fruit leather ... the list seems almost endless. But really most of that should be done within a day or so of picking, and I feel too busy at the moment to start making whatever.

Thank goodness for the freezer!

Seriously, how did people manage without one?
By late autumn my freezer will be full of home-grown fruit and veg, all stored with very little effort.
I'm definitely a lazy cook, and the quicker and easier I can get vegetables into the freezer, the better.
So, I love fruit which is just washed and drained, or tomatoes which are wiped clean, maybe chopped, then bagged and frozen, but I'm not so fond of runner beans which need preparing and blanching first!

Even so, it has to be SO much better than standing over a hot stove, stirring hot bubbling jam or chutney.
Sometime over winter, on a cold, wet day, I'll get the raspberries from the freezer and make jam, or tomatoes and prepare passata, and it's like the return of summer.

But for now, everything surplus to dinner is going in the freezer!

Bread and Butter pickle

I first experimented with bread and butter pickle a couple of years ago, when I had a glut of cucumber from the allotment, then last year I had a surplus of courgettes and tried using them as the main ingredient. Both worked well,though I think maybe the courgettes lasted longer without going soggy. 

waiting for salt to draw out the moisture

This year though I don't have either crop in sufficient quantities to make pickles, but I so loved them to liven up winter lunch-time sandwiches that I bought a net of cheap 'odd shapes' courgettes specifically. 

These really are the simplest pickles to make - draw out moisture with salt, drain, cover with hot spiced vinegar, then stand for a couple of weeks.

So easy!

sugar, mustard, turmeric + half a chilli
 to spice up the vinegar

Back to jam-making ..... and blogging

 I recently realised I'd let this blog run down rather, though to be honest I haven't been doing much in the way of crafty or culinary things - well, not interesting things. Last week though I was somewhat forced into them after clearing one of the garden apple trees of fruit. Most of it was damaged in some way - wasps or birds nibbling mainly - and, as I can never bear to let things go to waste, it had to be used straight away.

 You can see the pecked at bits, or marks where insects have burrowed inside, but though it doesn't look like very attractive fruit most of it was only partly damaged and most of each apple save-able.
 Anyway, I peeled and chopped and had about 2 1/2lbs which I boiled up, then added the same weight of blackberries from the freezer (some of which were last years!) to make a lovely dark jam.

 Having made a start, maybe I'll be back in the swing of things - and back blogging about it!

Decorating with chillies

It's the time of year for putting up the decorations but for a while the Christmas ones must wait. I have a string of chillies drying over the dining room radiator - and they cannot be disturbed!

It's one of the easiest ways to preserve them. When they're dried, I'll pack them in jars and they keep for years!

Use it or lose it!

  Two attempts, this week, at trying to make something out of 'useless' food;


First a couple of whopper cucumbers found lurking at the back of the greenhouse under all the foliage. Both green cucumbers had hard knobbly skins and didn't look at all pleasant to add to salad or sandwiches. I've already made a stash of marmalade this year with surplus cucumbers, and experimented with piccalilli, so wanted to try something else and settled on 'bread and butter pickle'.

Basically, cucumber and onion are salted for a couple of hours,then drained and added to hot vinegar spiced with mustard seeds, fennel seeds and turmeric - the latter gives it a rather odd yellow colour that I'm not sure if I'm fond of.




Now it has to sit in the fridge for a while to let the vegetables 'pickle', so I can't test it for a week or so.

Meanwhile.... something sweeter. A couple of days ago I made curry which required coconut milk, and not having the tinned version to hand I made some by steeping dessicated coconut in boiling water. Having used the water as 'milk' I was then left with the remains of the coconut. it isn't really all that flavoursome by this point by I've tried using it in cakes before and it's ok. This time I made muffins  - with an extra little bit of 'use it or lose it' involved. In the baking cupboard, I found glace cherries (probably from last year's Christmas cake) with a 'best before' date of end of September. Phew! Just in time!