Bog Roll :: stuff/food

One of my favourite eating apple varieties is the English Egremont Russet. It's different from the bland modern apples that are nothing more than bags of wet sugar. While on holiday in France this New Year, I came across a relative, the Reinette grise du Canada, a popular French variety of russet that came from England via Canada. It's a older variety and slightly larger in size, but very similar in texture and flavour - well worth finding.

posted 19:10 :: /stuff/food :: permalink :: ^

Yesterday I made a batch of jam using Mr Miot's method. It's based on his standard method which is different from the method I've used myself previously.

• 1 Kg Rhubarb (frozen then defrosted)
• 0.8 Kg Sugar
• ½ a lemon (frozen then defrosted)
• 200 ml rhubarb juice (from the defrosted 1 Kg)
• 250 g crystallised ginger (my addition, not in the French original)

First you freeze the lemon and the chopped and cleaned rhubarb. Freezing and defrosting the lemon should ease the extraction of pectin for setting the jam. Freezing and defrosting the rhubarb should extract water juices from it, keep just 200 ml.

Heat the sugar, juice from the lemon and the lemon along with the rhubarb juice up to boiling point (121°C). Once it's rolling along add the chopped rhubarb and return to the boiling point. Boil hard for a further 15 minutes (give or take) and then add the ginger. After removing any scum and a a few more minutes it should be ready to pot.

I jammed 2.2 Kg of rhubarb with 1.76 Kg sugar, two small lemons and 0.5 Kg of chopped crystalised ginger. Tasted okay on the night, but rhubarb and ginger takes a few days to reach full flavour.

• Mr Miot's jam method
• my previous rhubarb jams

posted 22:46 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

Yesterday we went to a local PYO farm to collect fruit for jamming. As much as we love redcurrant jelly we decided to skip it for this year and try something new - so I spent £15 on mostly strawberries.

Strawberries are terrible to jam, they are low in pectin, high in water and (in the shops in the UK) low in flavour. If it were not for the national obsession with them, no one in their right mind would bother with them...

I decided to use the recipe of Francis Miot, who is some top French jam maker:

• 700 g strawberries (fraises)
• 350 g redcurrants (groseilles) - you are supposed to remove the pips with a goose quill but we skipped this...
• 200 g water (d'eau) - it seemed an awful lot but it did turn out okay
• 1/2 lemon (citron décongelé) - ideally frozen and defrosted
• 800 g sugar (sucre blanc) - does not need added pectin
• 30 ml red wine (vin rouge) - we skipped this as we don't drink wine

The method is his standard method. First heat the sugar, water and lemon (squeezed juice and whole fruit) up to a full boil (121°C), then you add your topped and halved strawberries and (deseeded) redcurrants and bring back to a full boil. You then boil on full heat for 20 minutes before potting into hot cleaned jars as normal.

For best flavour do not add butter, remove the scum with a slotted jam spoon instead. Don't soak your fruit overnight in sugar as it draws out too much water - or so Mr Miot says.

We started with 2.1 Kg strawberries and 1.05 Kg redcurrants and yielded 13 (full) 370 g Bonne Maman jars. This morning we opened a jar to test - VERY GOOD!

posted 22:56 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

I've done three batches of jam this spring. So far I've done a batch of champagne rhubarb, rhubarb and ginger and today a batch of rhubarb and orange marmalade. Recipes as previous years, though I did cut the sugar levels down this year as previous years have been very sweet and if you can increase the fruit levels it's worth it.

• Rhubarb and Ginger Jam (III)
• 14 kg of Rhubarb Marmalade!
• Late Rhubarb Jam
• Rhubarb and Ginger Jam (II)
• Rhubarb and Orange Marmalade (II)
• Rhubarb and Orange Marmalade
• Rhubarb and Ginger Jam

posted 18:29 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

It's pumpkin season again. As is usually the case, virtually no-one buys them in the UK and even fewer people cook with them. As with 2007 and 2006 I've made another pumpkin pie.

As with 2006 we were working in Little Meadow except the pie was made after the work, so my colleagues didn't get to share in this year's first pie. Instead my father is visiting this weekend, so he got a share!

posted 14:51 :: /stuff/food :: permalink :: ^

Today I made three batches of jam. I am now full of enough sugar to power a Tour de France bike rider up an Aple. I started with 2 Kg or redcurrant juice to which I added 2 kg of sugar to make 9 jars of jelly. Next it was a kilo of rhubarb, 500 g of crystallised ginger and a kilo of sugar to make 6 jars of jam. Finally 2 Kg of rhubarb, a kilo of oranges and 2.2 Kg of sugar make 12 jars of marmalade. Should keep the household running another year.

It's taken so much of my day up that I've still not had time to get NFSv4 working with Kerberos 5. I've just had enough time to join together kinit, telnet.krb5 and ksshaskpass.

posted 20:00 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

Today I went to a friend's garden to pick his surplus rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum or Rheum x hybridum.). I collected over 4 Kg, of which 3 Kg is now soaking in sugar and lemon juice in the fridge.

After lunch we went to the nearby PYO farm on the hunt for redcurrants (Ribes rubrum) and strawberries (Fragaria spp.). They were out of strawberries, which is a bit odd as there should still be plenty and last year at this time they were over run with them. The redcurrants had also been picked hard (and very poorly), which made picking them a pain but we were easily able to collect over 3.5 Kg of red and white currants. Except a few kept for eating the currants are simply mashed up and filtered to make jelly.

Tomorrow I plan to make one batch of redcurrants jelly, one batch of rhubarb and ginger jam and one batch of rhubarb and orange marmalade.

posted 18:14 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

At the Sheep Fair we sold all our jam, after materials the OBS made a profit of over £100 on the jam. Even after the event people have been asking to buy jam and I have to keep telling people it's all gone, all 20 kg of it!

posted 12:46 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

Today we made 6.5 kg of rhubarb and ginger jam. We used the same recipe as originally rather than last years variant where you peel the rhubarb. Peeling the rhubarb before jamming it is the "Victorian" method which apparently tastes better. Leaving the "skin" of the rhubarb on does however change the colour of the jam from green to ruby red. I'm not sure it make much difference but not peeling makes the whole process quicker and easier, but you need pristine rhubarb.

posted 21:15 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

Over the weekend I made a mega batch of rhubarb marmalade, all told with rhubarb, oranges and sugar it came to over 14 kg of final product. It was so much it had to be done in two batches!

The method was as last year. Tonight I'll make some rhubarb and ginger jam.

When it's all done it will go on sale at Overton's 2008 Sheep Fair to raise money for the Overton Biodiversity Society.

posted 19:00 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

Just made a dead simple microwave pudding. We were looking for a steamed pudding recipe that we could microwave instead of steam, and this one looked good enough to try, so in less than 30 minutes it's all done and eaten!

• The Topping:
  • 70 g whole cranberries (fresh or frozen)
  • 100 g recurrent jelly
• The Pudding:
  • 85 g Self-raising flour
  • 25 g ground rice
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 100 g sugar
  • 2 medium eggs
  • 100 g butter
  • vanilla pods or good vanilla extract

In a small pan gently heat the redcurrant jelly and 2/3^rds of the cranberries. Simmer until the cranberries are soft but do not rupture them. Set aside and allow to cool a little.

Grease the inside of a 700 ml microwave safe pudding bowl with butter.

Mix the pudding ingredients together and beat into a sponge batter. Fold in the 1/3^rd of the uncooked cranberries.

In the bottom of the pudding basin, spoon 1/3^rd of the cooked cranberry+redcurrant mixture. Carefully spoon the pudding mixture on top. Cover the basing with a silicone top or similar. Blast in the microwave, we did it for 8 minutes on high, which may be a minute too long.

Once cooked, tip onto a plate and pour over the remaining cranberry+redcurrant mixture. Serve with lashings of custard.

posted 17:01 :: /stuff/food :: permalink :: ^

It's pumpkin season again. As with previous years pumpkins arrive in British shops at silly prices, nobody buys them and then they suddenly get very cheap. We got a big one, once prices fell last week. So far it's made two batches of pumpkin soup, a pumpkin cake (like carrot but with pumpkin), an apple & pumpkin pie and there is enough left for another batch of soup.

This year I had lots of apples at the same time as the pumpkin so I made a mixed apple and pumpkin pie. First you steam your pumpkin and cook your apples, and then mix them in a ratio of 1:1 and puree. In a separate bowl whisk 250 g sugar, 2 medium eggs and 10 ml ground nutmeg. Blend the fruit puree and the egg mixture and thin with milk if required (mine didn't need thinning today). Pour the mixture into a 20 cm diameter pastry lined pie dish, sprinkle more grated nutmeg on top and put into a hot oven (220°C). After 15 minutes reduce the temperature to 160°C and leave for 20-30 minutes until fully cooked.

posted 12:45 :: /stuff/food :: permalink :: ^

Last weekend we were given some very late rhubarb. Today I turned chopped rhubarb into rhubarb jam. It was a similar method to the earlier rhubarb and ginger: soak overnight in sugar and lemon juice then cook too jamming point. I ran out of sugar, so the mixture was 2.5 Kg of fruit, 2 Kg of sugar and the juice of one lemon. The yield was a surprising 10 full pots plus three micro-pots, more than I expected. Apparently late season rhubarb is better for jamming, we shall see when we taste it, once it has reached full maturity in a few weeks.

posted 23:27 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

At the weekend we picked some strawberries from a local PYO farm. This year has seen a very sizable crop but the damp weather has put people off picking it, so there were tonnes left when we went. A friend also gave us a few kilos of rhubarb.

Yesterday, on my day off, I cooked the strawberries and rhubarb (about 1:1 by weight) with a sprinkle of sugar and some vanilla. I then made an "Eve's" pudding with the fruit stew. It's very good. I've decided that strawberries taste much better this way - served cold with cream they are so boring.

posted 21:38 :: /stuff/food :: permalink :: ^

Today, rather later than expected, I completed this year's batch of rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) and ginger (Zingiber officinale) jam.

The rhubarb crop was much delayed this year, we had a very hot and dry spring where the rhubarb didn't grow at all. The summer has been cool and damp so the rhubarb has grown well at long last - three months later than last year!

We got 2.7 kg of prepared stalks, to which I added 2.7 kg of sugar, the juice of three lemons and 300 g of chopped crystallised ginger. The yield was a whisker under 12x370 g jars. I've promised a few jars to friends in the village, but even so I should have plenty to keep me going until next spring.

posted 20:44 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^