Weird marmalade

 In a combination of pursuing my New Year resolutions and avoiding a horrible mess in the fridge, I decided in was time to make marmalade. I've been using bits of this huge home-grown pumpkin in various chillis, soups and goulashes, but not really using it up quickly enough and it's starting to show signs of rotting.






I don't have a very precise recipe for this marmalade. The original recipe came, I think, from Farmhouse Fare, a compilation of recipes sent in to Farmers Weekly but I've altered it here and there, and I just rather throw in what I've got available.








This time I've used 3lb pumpkin, several frozen lemon husks and a lime previously 'juiced' for mojitos.

So, five jars of marmalade, and I still have at least 2lbs of pumpkin left!

Using things up in the kitchen ....

 It's been a busy week of trying to use old veg that's been hanging round the kitchen and in the freezer since autumn.
 Last year's pumpkins are no longer keeping well, but starting to rot. Last week I made pumpkin marmalade, this week some chutney.

 Then I moved on to using some rather soft apples up and clearing some of the blackberries out of the freezer - seven jars of lovely 'black' jam.

Then, having picked some lovely early salad leaves from the garden, I decided I really should use up the stored blue radish.






This is a lot larger than little round red radish from the shop, but tastes more or less the same - a little hotter yet, having been stored since December, not as crisp. It's lovely to be able to start and put together a 'free lunch' again though :)

Panic stations!

 I was shocked at the weekend to discover most of the pumpkins and squashes stored from last year were starting to rot - some just a little, some past hope of salvaging!

I then decided I ought to use up some of the remaining good bits - quickly!

So, time for some marmalade making.

 It's possibly simpler than traditional marmalade - cube the pumpkin/squash, add some chopped up lemons (all from the freezer where I keep the bits leftover after squeezing for juice or grating the rind) simmer till cooked and squashy. Add sugar and stand over night. Then boil till set.

Lovely orange-coloured, lemon-flavoured marmalade.

While the snow falls outside...

....I've been busy (and warm) in the kitchen. First using up a home-grown pumpkin that was starting to rot by making marmalade and then using up gooseberries from the freezer to make some chutney.

Another Pumpkin.....

This pumpkin has been hiding in the cupboard under the stairs since Halloween and I only got it out now because I needed to make some marmalade.

That took a big 4lb chunk out of it so then on to using some for dinners ....

    chilli....


bacon and pumpkin inauthentic  goulash .....

curried bean and pumpkin soup

'leftovers' soup - basically cooked, mashed pumpkin with leftover spicy tomato sauce.







another chilli - with cannellini beans as I couldn't find kidney beans!

 ...and on to the very last piece for another 'leftover' soup, this time with a small amount of lamb stock, potatoes, baked beans and a generous spoonful of curry powder.

Last but not least - the seeds roasted with peri peri sauce. A tongue-tingling snack.

Ways to warm up the kitchen

This last week has been freezing cold with snow lying on the ground so I decided to stay inside and warm the house by replenishing our marmalade and jam stock - unbelievably, we were down to the last jar!

First I raided the freezer for blackberries and redcurrants to make a batch of jam. Then hauled the left-from-Halloween pumpkin out from the hidey hole under the stairs to put with frozen squeezed out lemons for marmalade. Because the lemons need to soak and soften, this recipe involves boiling on two days - not a plus point of the weather is at all warm but this week it was very welcome.

Take One Pumpkin #3

If you've been following the adventures of this pumpkin, you'll know I'm only about half way through it, so it seemed time to use up a lot in one go - for pumpkin and lemon marmalade.

3lb of pumpkin made 5 jars.












and there was still enough left for....
spicy tomato, chickpea and pumpkin stew...

....curried pumpkin and baked bean soup...













and with the very last piece....

pumpkin chilli - not quite a proper chilli as half way through I realised there weren't any tine of red kidney beans and had to substitute borlottis.

Take One Pumpkin.....#2

We're almost half way through the pumpkin and raiding the recipe books for untried ideas...

Gardener's Chicken with pumpkin from the Abel & Cole Cookbook

Chickpeas with pumpkin, lemongrass and coriander from Tender by Nigel Slater

 ..and a make-it-up-as-I-go lunch  - chopping pumpkin with onions and peppers for a tomatoey soup

Testing - Tender by Nigel Slater #1

          Chickpeas with pumpkin, lemongrass and coriander

Part of the continuing search for interesting new pumpkin recipes.....

I started out knowing I would have to substitute a few things - tinned chickpeas instead of dried, lemon instead of lemon grass and, most interesting as I knew the theory but have never tried it out, d-i-y coconut milk from dessicated cocnut. I then realised I didn't have the stem ginger and forgot to add coriander at the end!

Despite what seems like a catalogue of errors, this worked quite well. It wasn't a complicated recipe but I should have sorted the spices - the recipe calls for ground coriander and turmeric, cardamom pods and a chilli rather than adding a 'curry powder' - before I started cooking instead of hunting round in the cupboard while the pans got hot. It was a little too 'hot' for me but our home-grown chillies are unpredictable in heat - even so, another time I might add less.

Testing - The Abel & Cole Cookbook #1

Gardener's Chicken with Pumpkin (and Walnuts)

I've being trying to find new and hopefully exciting ways to use a large pumpkin and discovered this recipe in the Abel & Cole Cookbook. I didn't have any walnuts to hand but as they were only added at the end, I thought I'd go ahead anyway.

The recipe claimed to be quick and simple - and was. Basically the chicken and veg were tossed in olive oil then simmered in stock till cooked. I expected it to taste very like my normal chicken stew but the addition of sage almost at the end made a huge difference. 

The chicken looks a bit shrunken - because it is! but it's not the recipe's fault. It's not the nicest chicken ever but one of those 'cook from frozen' pieces which accounts for its looks. There wasn't a suggestion of what to serve with this dish so I cooked some of our home grown potatoes. After photographing, I decided they'd be better mashed to help soak up the sage-flavoured 'gravy'.

 

Take One Pumpkin....

I'm a great fan of pumpkins - either for soups, pasta, curries, chutney, marmalade...  anything really. This year we only have one small homegrown one, so with shops full of them for Halloween I had to stock up. I had intended to carve at least one of them but didn't so there hasn't been the desperate rush to use up pumpkin flesh that normally takes up the first week of November.

 I have now got round to cutting the first one - and I wondered out of curiosity how far my £2 investment would go....

The first wedge I took out went in lazy pumpkin chilli - chopped up pumpkin flesh, simmered till soft then a tin of chilli beans added.

 Second up was chutney ... 3lb of pumpkin chunks with onions, orange peel and mustards....

Same day - soup. Pumpkin and potato, flavoured with chilli and ginger, cooked in chicken stock till they could be mashed.





So far I've used a little under half. I wonder how much further it will stretch....

Fridge Clear-out Soup

Today I decided it was time to give the fridge a clearout - and found the last bit of the last homegrown pumpkin, leftover chicken stew from earlier this week and a half-used jar of roasted pepper spread.

I'd been going to make pumpkin chilli but had a rethink - and ended up with a sort of Moroccan soup.

Dice the pumpkin flesh and cook it in the chicken stew with some diced onion and a clove of garlic. When it's soft, squash with a potato masher.
Add a chopped up red pepper (mine had been lingering in the fridge while we were on holiday last week, so not looking too good), half a chopped chilli (aiming for a little heat not burning the inside of my mouth) and squashed up seeds from a cardamom pod. By this point, more water needed adding. Once the pepper started to soften I added a tin of chick peas and a heaped teaspoon of the roasted pepper spread, and just let it all heat through again.
It was delicious - spicy without burning my mouth. I'll have to make it again sometime.

Store cupboard fail!

I decided one lunchtime last week to make chilli - mainly from home-grown veg - the end of a pumpkin that had been sitting in the fridge a little too long, my unpredictable chillies, tomatoes from the freezer - and a tin a cheap shop bought kidney beans.

Everything was going wonderfully till at almost the last minute I went in the 'tins' cupboard for the beans - plenty of special offer chick peas, cheapo baked beans, even a tin of cannellinis but NO kidney beans!

Now, I know I could have used one of the other sorts of beans but it seemed like a good opportunity to have a completely home grown lunch, so I raided the freezer again and added broad beans. Not usual for chilli, I'll grant you, but tasty nonetheless.

Pumpkin Marmalade

I've had a busy couple of days unexpectedly making marmalade. One of our homegrown pumpkins was turning soft, so I decided to use lots, though not all, of it up quickly.





OK, normally marmalade is made with oranges or other citrus fruit but I've made it before with different things such as apple or rhubarb to provide the bulk and some oranges or lemons to give the citrus taste.

So, I took 3lbs pumpkin chunks, rinds and flesh from a couple of squeezed out lemons (saved in the freezer) and 2oz crystallised ginger, and boiled them all in 2 1/2 pints water till the pumpkin was soft enough to mash up. Mashed the pumpkin, chopped up the lemon rind into thin strips. Let them all stand overnight - to soften the peel. In the morning added 3lb sugar and let it stand again till afternoon when I boiled it up to setting point.

It made a lovely lemony, ginger marmalade - which I also tested drizzled over roasting parsnips.

late Halloween chutney

for Halloween I carved two of the pumpkins grown this summer and, of course, ended up with lots of pieces of pumpkin flesh. the trouble being that scraping out the shell for a lantern leaves small chunks that don't keep well - cut a slice or a wedge from a pumpkin and the remainder will keep quite a while in the fridge even if the exposed edges have to be cut off and thrown away. I didn't weigh them before carving, but 3lb of flesh went in marmalade and we seem to have eaten pumpkin in some shape or form with every meal since then - curries, stir fries, soups, in tomato sauce with pasta - there are lots of ways to eat it but it's getting a bit same-some. Some has been boiled down into puree and frozen for use in soups and curries but there was still far too much left over. I didn't want to end up throwing it on the compost so I've turned it into chutney, with orange peel and spices.

halloween marmalade

Halloween yesterday, so the pumpkins grown over summer were carved with faces ready for the treat-or-treaters. Lots and lots of pumpkin flesh removed in the process and only so much soup that anyone can consume. So, out with the preserving pan again - this time for a pumpkin marmalade flavoured with lemon and ginger.