Apple Butter

 

Deep in me is a little piece of Virginia. I lived there back in the dark ages, that is, when I was a teenager, but there's still a part of me that misses those heavily-forested mountains blazing with autumn colour; the red brick houses tucked among oaks and azaleas; the occasional glimpses of deer and bear. And I miss the roadside apple stands.

Ah, apple stands. If you're thinking of a charming tumbledown Tasmanian shed with a few bags of apples and an honesty box, think again. This is America, home of free enterprise and mind-blowing kitsch. Imagine instead a road, wending its way above the clouds through glorious mountains. Turn a corner, and be confronted by an enormous parking lot ablaze with the red, white and blue, if not the Confederate flag. There's probably music blasting, country or western – we like all types. The lot contains Ford Broncos and big Toyota trucks; the people wear jeans and flannelette shirts. You might see lank hair protruding from a battered baseball cap, or frizzy-haired women in tight jeans and full make up.

And there you buy God's gift to Virginia: apples. You can also buy cider, hard (alcoholic) or soft; apple butter; apple jelly; and maybe even salt-water taffy. You might also find cinnamon-scented candles, battery-operated plastic things, soft toys, t-shirts, flags, and a range of other tat.

The gallon jugs of cider are awesome, like nothing I've found in Australia. The apple jelly, a clear preserve, is sweetly quivering; and the apple butter smooth and unctuous.

At this time of year, in a Melbourne winter, the cool crisp air reminds me of a Virginian autumn. I go for brisk rides around town, looking for red bricks and deciduous trees, then come home and make apple butter.

I haven't seen apple butter for sale here. I don't know why, because it's simple to make, and delicious. It doesn't contain butter. Instead, it's just apples cooked down with sugar and spices until they form a glossy spreadable purée, just the thing to liven up a slice of toast or, better, pancakes. Apple butter pairs especially well with God's other gift to Virginia, the hog. Thanks to its climate, which makes it ideal for raising and curing hogs, Virginia is the capital of salty pork products.

Apple butter and bacon: cool hot, sweet salty, smooth crisp… the combination proves that there is a God, and she wants us to be happy. On a Sunday, my nine-year-old makes buckwheat pancakes while I frazzle up some bacon. We spread our pancakes thickly with apple butter, and load bacon on the side. Here's happiness on a plate, and something I owe to Virginia.

Two methods for apple butter are given below. If you have a food mill, you don't need to peel or core the apples, which makes for maximum flavour and pectin. If you don't have a food mill, peel and core the apples, expect to cook the butter longer, and use either a blender or an immersion blender to make a smooth purée.

Apple Butter - 2 kg apples, any type, any combination (whatever's going off in the fruit bowl/whatever's cheap) - 2 cups sugar - the juice of a lemon - 1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon - ½ tsp ground cloves - a pinch of salt If you have a food mill, fantastic. Chop the apples randomly – don't peel or core them – and throw them into a big bowl. As you go, layer the apples with the sugar. Cover the bowl and leave all day or overnight to macerate. If you don't have a food mill, peel and core the apples, then chop, layer, cover and leave as above. Scrape the apples, leached juice and sugar into a large deep pot. Throw in the other ingredients. Cook over medium heat until the apples are completely soft, at least thirty minutes. Turn off the heat and leave to cool for a little while, then purée either by putting it all through the finest screen of a food mill, or using a blender of some sort. Return the purée to the pot, and turn the heat back on. With the heat medium-low, keep stirring and scraping the purée, ensuring nothing sticks to the pan. If you stop stirring, it will spit like crazy – think quince paste. You have been warned. You will need to stir it for about an hour, or a bit more if you have excluded the peels and cores; it depends on the pectin levels of your apples. Meanwhile – and this is the trick – wash five 300g jam jars. Sterilise the jars and lids using your chosen method (baby bottle steam steriliser / boiling water in deep pot), remove, and place on a tray in a low oven. Somehow, you will do all this about halfway through stirring the apple butter – either resign yourself to some butter spitting onto the wall while you flit between sink and stove, or enlist help! I recommend the latter. After about an hour, the butter will begin to firm up. When a wooden spoon scraped across the bottom of the pot leaves a bit of a path, the butter will have attained a nice spreadable consistency (see picture below). Turn off the heat.   WEARING GLOVES, remove the jars from the oven and place on a wooden surface. If you don't have a wooden bench top, use a wooden board or even a stack of newspapers on the bench. Fill the jars, screw on the lids, and invert. Leave on the bench, undisturbed, for twenty-four hours. After this time, turn the jars right-side-up, label clearly with the contents and date, and store in a cool dark cupboard. Important comment: Every government agency insists that the only safe way to preserve food is to run it through a boiling water preserver. They are right. You can find complete instructions here. The fact that I choose to use a traditional French method to seal jars is a matter of preference; if you try it and get botulism, don't blame me! (Local: apples, lemon. Northern Victoria: salt. Not local: sugar, cinnamon, cloves.)

Slow Cooked Tomato Sauce

When I think of preserving tomatoes, I always come back to the idea of sauce. I imagine an extended Italian family gathered together to cook down tomatoes, tell stories, sing songs and crack bad jokes, the older women wearing frumpy aprons, the young men a little flirtatious, a little cheeky, and everything a bit like the saccharine sugo scene in Looking For Alibrandi . But that’s not my reality, nor, I suspect, that of many Italian sauce-makers). I’m not Italian, I don’t have a big vat bubbling away with tomatoes or family and friends who seem interested in making an event of sauce making, and I’m not even sure I want it. I’m happy with just me and the kids fooling around in our kitchen, making small batches of sauce when we feel like it.

So I don’t make big batches. Instead, I preserve whole tomatoes; then, if I feel like a slow cooked tomato sauce later in the year, I use the bottled tomatoes to make a batch. But I do buy 15kg boxes of tomatoes for preserving. A 15kg box of tomatoes yields 24 Fowlers Vacola #20 jars of plum tomatoes, plus 2 to 2 ½ kilos of tomatoes left over. It’s not enough to bother bottling and running the processor again, but it’s a good amount to make sauce in a frying pan. Two kilos of fresh tomatoes cooks down to about a litre of sauce – enough for two meals in our family: one for dinner, and one in the freezer for some time next week.

Note: You will need to use a food mill or do some serious work with a sieve for this recipe.

Slow Cooked Tomato Sauce - 2 to 2 ½ kg ripe Roma tomatoes (the sauce is all about the tomatoes, so ensure they are ripe to begin with – and Roma, or sauce, tomatoes make the best sauce, surprise surprise, because they have lots of flesh and very little juice or seeds) - 1 red onion - olive oil - rosemary (or if you prefer, thyme or basil) - salt Warm a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a wide deep frying pan over low heat. Peel the onion and halve it lengthwise. Slice it into very thin half moons. Drop the onion in the pan and sprinkle it with a good pinch of salt. Cook it for a few minutes, or until it softens, but do not let it colour. Take a sprig of rosemary a couple of inches long. Strip the needles from the stem and chop them very finely. Add them to the pan. Quarter the tomatoes – no need to peel or core – and throw them in the pan. Cook over a gentle heat, stirring from time to time to ensure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan. The tomatoes will collapse and the skins will loosen. Keep cooking for two to two and a half hours, or until most of the moisture has disappeared. Remove from the heat. Scrape the tomato mixture into a food mill and press through. (Or rub it through a sieve, much harder work!) You will be left with a rich red sauce; discard the skins. Test the sauce. If it is thick enough, well and good; otherwise, return it to the pan and cook down until it is the consistency you long for. Half a batch is enough for a packet of pasta for our family – but if you like your pasta to swim in the sauce, use the entire batch! Serve with grated parmesan. Notes: Of course, you can also make this sauce with two or three Fowlers Vacola #20 bottles of whole tomatoes. Because the tomatoes have been processed, you can reduce the cooking time: first check the thickness at 1 hour, and then cook until it's as you like it. This sauce is also good as a pizza topper, and it freezes well. It is not, however, suitable for preserving via the Fowlers Vacola system as the addition of onions can lower the acidity to a point where little nasty microbes are able to breed. If you want to see how real Italian Australians make sauce, click here. 34 boxes of tomatoes? Eight hours of boiling? Very impressive – but not my cup of tea! And I see that a neighbour and fellow blogger just posted on her never-to-be repeated childhood experience of sauce; now she opts for small batches, too. (Backyard: rosemary. Grampians: olive oil. Local veg box: onion. Northern Victoria: tomatoes, salt.)

Bottled Tomatoes

Yet another post about bottling! Preserving is clearly on my mind, and this is the time, in early autumn, when tomatoes are cheap and plentiful. But why would a busy girl bottle?

All eating, in fact all decisions, are a question of values. We all have lots of values jostling for primacy; our decisions bear out which values are foremost. And with food, the value equation is sometimes very difficult to calculate. Organic? Not organic? Local? Imported? Cheap? Expensive? Fair trade? Sustainable? Delicious? – well, duh!

For me, deciding which type of canned tomato to use requires lots of value juggling. My preference would be for cheap, local, organic, sustainable canned tomatoes delivered to my door. In an ideal world, they’d be bottled in glass, which I would then return to the distributor for re-use. But this does not exist, at least not in my neighbourhood.

Mostly, then, we have bought Italian organic canned tomatoes. I cringe at the air miles, but I also cringe at Australian canned tomatoes: the open irrigation channels that water tomato crops in the desert; the sprays used; and the flavour. So often Australian canned tomatoes are watery and tasteless, and an unappetising pink. People, ripe Roma tomatoes are deep red! So I’ve used Italian organic tomatoes. Then an Italian friend came over, glanced at a can, and muttered something about the Albanians. ‘What?’ I asked. She told me all about the illegal immigrants who work in the Italian tomato fields in slave-like conditions and said she’d never buy tomatoes from Italy. She is a wise and gentle woman and I trust her. But sheesh!

I looked at other options. In years past I’ve bottled organic Victorian tomatoes, but now I’m feeding a family of five plus lots of guests the cost is prohibitive. $15 a kilo for organic tomatoes which then need to be processed vs $3 a kilo for Italian imported canned tomatoes that require no further work?! I’m not doing that anymore.

I decided ‘organic’ had to go. I bought Victorian grown conventional tomatoes from my Italian greengrocer. At $12 per ruby-red 15 kilo box, they satisfy my values of local, cheap and delicious. Then my daughters and I canned them, which satisfied a whole bunch of other values: educational, as I teach my kids how to do useful stuff; familial, as we work together to produce something nourishing for the family; and aesthetic, as a dark cupboard glinting with row upon row of bottled tomatoes is a sight to behold. My neighbours walked in and admired, with the result that I’ll make a batch for them – so now a communal value is also being satisfied.

The last value is perhaps the simplest: a busy girl might preserve because she enjoys it. There is nothing quite like the deep satisfaction that comes from doing good work. We live in such an age of leisure that it’s taken me a long time to recognise that working at something I love, especially when it’s easy and productive and repetitious, is much more fun than being idle. When I’ve finished a batch of preserves or jam, I float on air. I gloat, wandering in and out of the kitchen to look and look again. I leave things on my tiny bench for an extra day just so anyone who walks in the house notices; then I am casually off-hand about preserving – but inside, a little child is jigging about singing ‘Look what I can do!’. It’s satisfying in a way almost nothing else is.

So those are all the reasons why I bottle; maybe one or two of those reasons might inspire you to bottle, too! So let’s get down to the nuts and bolts. In the past, I used Fowlers Vacola’s suggested method, which is to can whole tomatoes in water. They were okay but not great. This year I’ve followed the suggestion of Food in Jars: to place whole peeled tomatoes in the jars with some serious squishing action, which results in tomatoes canned in their own juice. Beautiful to behold, they are also absolutely delicious. So all kudos to Food in Jars for the method. I provide instructions below for Australians using Fowlers Vacola jars; if you use Mason jars or want to see descriptive photos, click here.

For the most part, I use a Fowlers Vacola #20 jar for tomatoes. I can’t tell you how many individual tomatoes per jar because the tomatoes in the boxes I get vary enormously in size and weight, but it’s about 600g of tomatoes. Eight #20 jars fit in the Simple Natural Preserving Kit; so five kilos of tomatoes makes eight jars plus a few over for lunch or the next round. I buy 15 kilo boxes, then fill and process 24 jars over two days (ie three runs through the kit); the remaining two or so kilos of tomatoes I turn into a slow cooked tomato sauce.

Bottled Tomatoes - ripe Roma tomatoes, red inside and out. Roma, because they have an excellent flesh to juice ratio. Note that preserving them will not make them ripe. You do need to source properly ripened tomatoes. - commercially made lemon juice (you need lemon juice to acidify the tomatoes, thus rendering them safe; use a commercial product to ensure the acidity is consistent, unlike the acidity of backyard lemons) Soak the rubber rings in hot water for 15 minutes. Wash the jars and lids in hot soapy water. Fit the rings onto the wet jars, being careful that there are no bends or kinks in the rings. Place 2 tsp lemon juice into each #20 jar; 1 tbs lemon juice into each #31 jar; check the Fowlers Vacola instruction book for all other jar sizes. Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Ready a bowl of cold water beside the stove. Using the tip of a small paring knife, core the tomatoes in one deft twist of the knife. Slice a cross in the base of each tomato. Drop five or six tomatoes at a time into the boiling water and leave for one to two minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and drop into the cold water. Get a four-year-old to fish out the wet tomatoes and slide the skin off in one easy motion. She can also pack the jars. Drop tomatoes into the jars, jiggling a little to get a firm pack. You may need to use either your four-year-old’s little hand or a wooden spoon to pack the tomatoes firmly. Squish them a bit as you pack so that the juices ooze out. Keep packing and squishing until you have a jar full of tomatoes and juice. Ease out any air bubbles with a packing stick. Leave a 12mm headspace. Wipe the rim free of any pulp or juice, place the lid on the jar and fit the clip. When eight jars are ready, load up your preserving kit and process for an hour. My preserving kit comes to the boil quite early. I turn it off at the forty minute mark for ten minutes, then turn it on again until the time is up. The water stays stinking hot during that time, and that way you get an hour at the correct temperature without it boiling away. As soon as the hour is up, remove the jars and place them on a wooden board or a pile of old newspapers. Leave them to cool for eighteen hours. Remove the clips. Label each jar clearly with the date and batch number, and hide away in the hall cupboard or somewhere else cool and dark. They will keep for several years, but are best eaten within twelve months. These tomatoes are terrific in stews and casseroles, or cooked down into pasta sauce. Yum! (Victoria: tomatoes. No idea (‘local and imported ingredients’, sigh): lemon juice.)

Bottled Figs with Red Wine and Spices, and a whole lot more besides!

The one problem with water bath processing is that it involves a whole lot of water and power. Often, a person who has a small home garden may find it hard to justify using a water bath; when you seem to have enough produce for only one bottle, there's no point getting out the preserving machine.

Then again, getting out the machine can motivate you to look around and see what else is available, even in a little garden.

Take this week. A friend dropped by with two quinces. They were windfalls she had found on the footpath, and she thought I might know how to use them. True. But by the time I cut out the wormholes, there wasn't really enough to bake or make marmalade or paste. Perhaps there was enough for one or two bottles of poached quinces, not enough to justify a water bath.

But then I noticed a dozen fat figs on the tree going begging, also not enough for jam or paste, but too many to eat in one go.

And our pear tree had a few pears on it, very ripe.

And our little espaliered apple trees were starting to drop their several fruits.

And our veggie box had delivered a big bag of black grapes last week, but my fussy kids hadn't eaten them.

And there were some roma tomatoes sitting in the fruit basket, and they're good for canning.

And my four-year-old is going through a chopping stage, and wants to spend all day cooking.

So this is what we did.

I made a honey syrup for the quinces and lightly poached them. Then we packed them across two jars; they came two thirds of the way up the sides. We topped them up with apples from the garden, aiming for a casual layered look.

My daughter halved all the figs while I warmed a little leftover red wine with some sugar and spices. We barely poached the figs in the fragrant syrup, then packed them in a jar.

According to the Fowlers Vacola book, preserved grapes are 'excellent'. I have my doubts, but I'll try anything once, so my daughter carefully halved all the black grapes and we bottled them in water with a tablespoon of blackberry honey.

We peeled and cored the pears, and packed them with a tablespoon of sugar and a cinnamon stick.

Finally, my daughter quartered and packed the tomatoes.

A bit over an hour and six jars later, we had enough to justify running the processor and my daughter was beaming. And so was I. Now we have five desserts ready for winter, plus a bottle of tomatoes, to add to our stash in the hall cupboard.

As everything was very simple I won't record the recipes except, perhaps, for the figs.

Bottled Figs in Red Wine and Spices For each Fowlers #20 jar: - 12-15 fat black figs - 3 tbs red wine - 3 tbs white sugar - 1 stick cinnamon - 6 cloves Gently warm the wine, sugar and spices with 150ml water in a medium sized saucepan, shaking until the sugar has dissolved. Cut off the fig stalks, and halve each fig. Place the figs in the saucepan, and cook for 4 or 5 minutes, gently shaking from time to time. Allow to cool. Pour much of the liquid into a #20 Fowlers jar, holding back the figs with a slotted spoon. Now gently pack the figs into the liquid, using a packing stick to release any air bubbles. Seal and process according to instructions. Note: This doesn't look like a lot of liquid. However, as the figs soften they will release ample liquid, which should be sufficient to cover them in the bottle. If you do find yourself a bit short, however, just top up with a little cold water. You might also like to add a long strip of orange peel, or perhaps a few drops of orange flower water, to each jar. PS – I'm sure a real food blogger would manage a nice photo. The figs are ugly and the glare from the glass is terrible. But trust me, they're good! (Backyard: black figs. Healesville: wine. Not so local: sugar, spice.)

Soft Fig Jam

 

Mid-March: fig season. We’ve been racing the bats and the parrots to eat the figs from our tree, going out most days to strip what we can reach before the furred and feathered varmints fly in. The best figs are those which are left to ripen fully on the tree, or until they are totally testicular. Of course, leaving them adds a slight element of risk: one pesky possum, or four fruit bats, can eat a lot in a night. And if the varmints don’t get them, and they are left too long, then they become fizzy and unpleasant. But perfectly ripe figs are so succulent that I am prepared to play the waiting game even at the cost of a few figs; it’s one of the few forms of gambling I am willing to participate in. Who needs a casino when you can experience the thrills of the high life, right here in the suburbs?!

There is a limit, however, to all this delightful decadence; one can’t eat too many figs at a sitting, lest one be forced to sit all day. So then I turn to jam. I use the classic Fowlers Vacola recipe with one exception: I don’t add extra pectin. It leaves a metallic tang and somehow flattens the flavours of the jam; needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway: I just don’t like it! As long as you throw a few less ripe figs into the mix, the jam will set sufficiently without the use of additives; you’ll get a sensuously soft jam that drops in dollops from the spoon, just right for blobbing onto toast or scones, crackers with a soft goats cheese, porridge, or a bowl of creamy natural yogurt.

If you don’t have your own fig tree, go for a laneway walk through an old migrant suburb one evening. You should find sufficient figs hanging over the fence for at least a half batch of this jam – enough for three standard jam jars or so.

Soft Fig Jam - 2 kg ripe black figs, plus a few not very ripe figs - ¾ cup orange juice (This is the juice of approximately two oranges.) - ¼ cup lemon juice (How many lemons? Backyard lemons vary enormously: anywhere from half a lemon to two lemons!) - 1 kg white sugar - 2 tbs sherry (optional) Place a saucer in the freezer. Wash the figs and behead them, making sure to cut below the point that the stem is oozing white sap. Throw the figs into a food processor or blender, and pulse-chop until you have a coarse purée. (Alternatively, you can chop them finely by hand.) Place them in a deep saucepan, and add the orange juice and lemon juice. Cook over medium-low heat for five to ten minutes, or until the purée is quite soft. (The cooking will also remove any air bubbles introduced when you whizzed the figs in the food processor, so don’t be surprised if the volume goes down.) Add the sugar a quarter-cup at a time, stirring well after each addition so that the sugar is dissolved and the jam doesn’t lose much heat. Add the sherry. Cook for 25 to 35 minutes at a gentle bubble, stirring regularly to ensure none sticks to the bottom, until it has reached the setting stage. (If you prefer a well-set jam, cook it for a bit longer.) To test for set, fetch your saucer out of the freezer and plop a dob of jam on it. Leave it for a minute. Now push the blob with your finger. If it separates into two distinct halves and has a slight crinkle on the surface where it has been pushed, it is set. If not, cook for another 5 minutes and test again; repeat until set. (The time it takes will depend on your fruit; the riper the fruit, the longer it takes.) Turn off the heat. Let the jam sit for five minutes before pouring into hot clean jars. Clean Jars: You’ll need six or seven jam jars. Wash them through the hot cycle in the top level of your dishwasher; or wash them in hot soapy water then run them through a baby bottle steriliser (good for small batches); or wash in hot soapy water then place in a low oven for twenty minutes – all before filling with jam. The method you use will dictate when you wash them eg you may need to turn on the dishwasher just before you start the jam in order to have the jars clean and hot when it comes to bottling time. Be intelligent: work out how you’re going to do it, and work out the times. I can’t do it for you! Personally, I use the baby bottle steriliser then go two routes. If a bottle has a metal lid, I screw on the lid, then flip the jar and leave it to stand upside down for twenty four hours. This is the French preserving method. If it doesn’t have a metal lid or if I am using a drinking glass, I use a Fowlers Vacola Kleerview Cover, available at my local supermarket, or direct from Fowler’s, or from the lovely Robert at Bee Sustainable in East Brunswick. (And to throw in an ad, which he doesn’t know about and hasn’t paid for- this month he has blackberry honey; that is, honey made from the pollen of blackberry flowers. It’s incredible; the berry flavour really comes through. Go get some before he runs out!) (This recipe is barely adapted from Fowlers Vacola's Secrets of Successful Preserving, which you get when you buy one of their preserving machines. I think it’s also available directly from them. Their website is under construction at the moment, but you can visit them at 23 Racecourse Road, North Melbourne, and stock up on all matter of preserving equipment while you’re at it!) (Local backyards: black figs, lemons. Victoria: oranges, sherry. Not so local: sugar.)

Apricot Jam, Simple and Perfect

 

It's rather eccentric, I realise, to use a food blog to talk about vomit, but here in the real world that's how life is. The quote of the week goes to my nine year old. Her father called, 'Don't put apricots in the vomit bucket!' And she looked at him and yelled, 'What? This bucket's been vomited in, that bucket's been vomited in, what am I supposed to use?'. It's true, folks, all four of our plastic buckets have been vomited in these holidays. God, I love small children. But I assure you that the buckets had been washed out in hot soapy water and left in the sun for a few days before she used them to collect apricots; and now I've been making jam.

What says summer more clearly than jam? Backyard trees are covered in fruit, far too much to eat fresh... so I'm busy stewing, canning, and jamming it up. Most instructions for jam call for perfect, unblemished fruit. Perhaps there are people who buy boxes of perfect fruit for jam, but in this house jam is made from the imperfect, quite blemished fruit off the trees in the backyard. We have two apricot trees. Some of the fruit is surprisingly large and unblemished, and that is eaten straight off the tree – why waste effort on something that is already perfect? But most of the fruit is small, some of it is parrot-pecked, and a little is even wormy. And it's the small, pecked and wormy fruit that is thrown into buckets ready for preserving.

 

Jam is easy. An hour in the kitchen leaves you with something several hundred times better than anything you can buy in the shops; if the fruit is already stewed, it will take only twenty minutes. I admit that large perfect fruit will give you much more jam for your time than the small blemished fruit, but it all works.

I find the easiest way to make jam with the small fruit is to prepare the fruit one evening, and make jam the next. I don't make large quantities of jam anymore, as we eat very little sugar these days; but it makes a nice sometimes food, and a lovely gift. The following instructions make about four jars of not too sweet jam, decadently fruity, which, because of the low sugar content and sealing method, should be eaten sooner rather than later.

The jars are sealed using a traditional French method. Use pop top jars (you know, those jars with bumps in the middle of the lids), wash them in very hot soapy water, allow them to dry, pour in the jam, screw the lid on tightly, then flip the jar and leave it to cool upside down on the bench for 24 hours. The lid will seal very tightly. It is a reasonably safe method, but not one approved by any modern government department.

If you are concerned about food safety or plan to store your jam for a long time, then use a 50/50 fruit/sugar ratio and sterilise the jars properly. The easiest way to sterilise small quantities of jars is to use a baby bottle steriliser; in lieu of that, you'll need boiling water and ovens... go find instructions, and good luck!

Apricot Jam - 1.5kg apricots (approximately; you will need to weigh them once they are prepared to gauge how much sugar to use. Slightly underripe fruit will give better results - firmer jam - than slightly overripe.) - white sugar (jam made with brown sugar tastes gross and goes off) - 2 tbs lemon juice Prepare the apricots. Remove the pits and quarter the flesh. If the apricots are, like mine, a bit wonky, cut out any pecks, wormholes, or bruises. Throw the good stuff into a large pot. Don't worry if there are big bits and little bits; we are making real food, not exhibits for the royal show. Add the lemon juice. Turn on the heat low, and gently cook the apricots until they have collapsed. Stir from time to time to ensure they don't stick. You do not need to add water; apricots produce plenty of moisture as they cook. When the apricots are lightly stewed, you can either turn off the heat, allow them to cool, and continue tomorrow; or you can continue now. Wash the jam jars and lids in hot soapy water and place them in a cool oven (ie the lowest temperature setting) while you finish the jam. Weigh the stewed apricots. You will need 70% of the weight in sugar (ie 1kg apricots = 700g sugar). Warm the apricots, then add the sugar in five or six batches, stirring between each batch to help it dissolve. Bring to a gentle boil, and let it plop away for 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally to ensure it doesn't stick. While the jam is cooking, put a ceramic plate in the freezer. After 15 minutes, the jam should be looking quite glossy. Fetch out your chilly saucer, put a blob of jam on it, and leave it for a minute. Now run your finger through the middle of the blob. If the now-separated-blob remains in two well formed blobs, amoeba-like, the jam is ready; if the two halves run back together, give it a few more minutes. Place the hot jars on a wooden surface or board. (Careful: they really are hot!) Ladle or pour the jam into the jars. (I use a stainless steel jug.) Using a clean cloth, wipe any drips off the rims of the jars, then screw the lids on and invert the jars. Leave to cool upside down for 24 hours. The next day, flip the jars right side up and clearly label. Store in a cool dark place – NOT above the fridge or anywhere else high in the kitchen as that's where all the heat sits. Should keep for a year, but jam never lasts long in our house. (Backyard: apricots. Gleaned from a laneway: lemons. Bought from afar: sugar.)

Mummy's an astrophysicist, Daddy's a house husband, and makes very good jam - if a little too much!

Chocolate Chestnut Spread

 

My daughters are big fans of an overly sweetened nut paste, which has got me thinking. We sometimes buy a certain chocolate hazelnut spread ('half the fat of peanut butter') as a school holiday treat. Right now it's the middle of term, but I wondered if I could fiddle around with chestnuts and make a spread that contained no vegetable oil, and far more nuts than sugar, sort of a not-school-holiday treat.

Chestnuts are naturally mealy, so they're a great candidate for a spread-type-of-thing. Recipes for chestnut jam abound; but they usually call for one part sugar to one part chestnut meats, a ratio I find rather sickly. Instead, I warmed puréed chestnuts with cocoa and sugar, tweaking proportions until it tasted just right: rich, nutty, chocolately, and certainly not too sweet. It went down a treat at the after school munchies, and powered a good long session in the garden – including naked trampolining at 14°C, I might add – before nightfall.*

As I used the medium disc of the food mill, the paste is slightly textured; if you want a perfectly smooth paste, use the finest disc of the food mill and perhaps drizzle in a little unflavoured vegetable oil until it looks glossy.

Chocolate Chestnut Spread - 300g fresh chestnuts in their shells, to make about 200g chestnut meats - 4 tbs cocoa - 4 tbs sugar - 1 tsp vanilla - ½ tsp salt First, prepare the chestnuts. Hold a chestnut flat side down on a sturdy chopping board. Place the tip of a sharp knife at the top of the nut, and lever it downwards so that the nut is bisected from top to bottom, but the knife does not cut through the shell on the flat side. (This is far more straightforward than it sounds.) Place the chestnut into a bowl. When all the chestnuts have been treated thus, place the bowl of chestnuts into the freezer for ten minutes. Bring a pot of water to the boil. When the ten minutes is up, remove the chestnuts from the freezer and slide them into the rapidly boiling water. Boil for eight minutes. Turn the heat down as low as possible. Remove several chestnuts from the barely simmering water with a slotted spoon, and quickly pop each nut half out of its shell and skin (or peel it). Continue until you have liberated all the nuts. Work fast, because as the nut cools the skin reattaches itself very firmly. If one or two chestnuts will not easily relinquish their skin, just slice it off rather than send yourself batty trying to peel it. Now the chestnuts are ready, and here you can pause for a day or two to suck your scalded fingers and recover, or, bless your soul, continue. Place the cocoa, sugar, vanilla and salt into a saucepan. Slowly add ¾ cup hot water, stirring, to make a paste. Now push the chestnuts through the medium disc of a food mill directly into the pan. (If you don't have a food mill, purée them in a food processor or beat the crap out of them with a potato masher and scrape into the saucepan.) Turn the heat on low, and, using a wooden spoon, beat the chestnuts into the cocoa paste. Cook over low heat for ten minutes, stirring constantly, until all is amalgamated and the cocoa smells cooked. You may need to add a little more hot water. Scrape the paste into a 310g jam jar, using a small spatula to ease it in and to press out any air bubbles. There will be enough left in the saucepan for a couple of tester slices of bread. As it does not contain as much sugar as a normal jam, eat quickly, and store it in the fridge. *Don't panic. The trampolinist has a good decade to go before she hits puberty, and is too short to be seen over the fence. (Local: chestnuts. Not local but fair trade: cocoa, vanilla. Other: sugar, salt.)

 

 

Bottled Plums, Two Ways

Each peach pear plum, I've got a red thumb. Actually, it's my whole hand. Actually, it's both my hands, to be precise. You see, a friend has a tree full of blood plums. Her kids hate them, so she gives them to us. On Sunday, we received an enormous tubful, and I've been busy all week. I've made bottled plums and poached plums, plum jam and plum sponge, and this afternoon I'm borrowing a dehydrator to see how that goes.

What's not to love about preserves? I peek into my great-grandfather's cupboard, purpose-built for preserves, and see row upon row of glowing fruit. Here is sunshine in a bottle. Here, too, is my link to all the women who went before me, stewing, bottling, and putting up food against lean times. I love being part of that history, and love the sense of abundance that is the result of frugality and hard work. I see so many fruit trees going to waste; we let the birds eat them, or the fruit fall to the ground. Preserves tackle this excess of seasonal fruit, and offer something to look forward to in winter.

On the top shelf of my great-grandfather's cupboard, we have jam. Apricot jam and plum jam, lemon suck and quince marmalade and even beetroot relish rest in the dark, quietly maturing. On the second shelf stand large jars of applesauce, ready for apple cake or apple dappy or a little person's breakfast. And now, plums. Plums in wine, plums in syrup, plums whole, plums quartered. Plums plums plums plums plums. Hence the hands.

What follows are two ways to bottle plums. Think of them not as precise recipes, but as suggestions. Measurements are approximate, as the ratio of plums to jars varies depending on whether the plums are large or small; and whether you use them whole, halved or quartered. Whole plums take up more space by weight; quartered plums pack tight. Of course, adjust the measurements to suit the jars you have. Whole plums are perhaps best packed into No. 31 jars, as they're nice and wide; but as my No. 31s are full of apples, I used No. 27s instead.

The first suggestion is for plums in red wine. This is a lovely thing to have on hand on a cold winter's night. Gently warmed and served with a dollop of thick cream or even yogurt, the plums are very soothing.

Second is simpler and more frugal: plums in a light sugar syrup. These are the plums my kids eat for breakfast, or I bake into a sponge on a chilly autumn day. I use a sugar syrup because our friend's plums are quite sharp, but you can preserve them in fruit juice or even water if you wish. If you have a sweet tooth, make the syrup heavier by adding another cup of sugar. Keep it plain, or slip a few cloves, a cinnamon stick or a vanilla pod into each jar to infuse the plums with extra flavour.

However you make them, they will be delicious. When summer is a distant memory and all is dull and grey, reach for a jar of ruby red plums. As a testament to your industry and the generosity of friends, nothing could be finer.

Bottled Blood Plums, Two Ways (Fowlers System) 1: Whole Plums in Red Wine - 3 kg blood plums, wiped clean of orchard dust and washed - aromatics: whole cardamom pods, cinnamon bark, whole cloves, star anise, vanilla beans or orange zest, as preferred - 2 bottles red wine - ½ cup sugar, or to taste Simmer the sugar with a bottle of red wine until the sugar has dissolved. Take off the heat, add the second bottle of wine and 500ml water, and leave to cool. While it is cooling, soak the rubber rings in warm water for 15 minutes or so. Wash six No. 27 jars and six No. 3 lids in hot soapy water, and rinse well. When the rings are ready, slip a ring over the rim of each jar, ensuring the ring is not twisted. Choose your aromatics: a long strip of orange peel or a stick of cinnamon or a few whole cardamom pods or whatever takes your fancy, and place one or several into each bottle. You may wish to flavour different bottles with different aromatics. Prick each plum twice (once each side) with a darning needle. This will prevent them from exploding. Pack into bottles. As you're packing, periodically shake the bottle, or bump it against the palm of your hand, to ensure the best pack. Top up each bottle with the preserving liquid to 1.2cm of the rim. Then follow the final instructions. 2: Quartered Plums in Light Sugar Syrup - 3 kg blood plums, wiped clean of orchard dust and washed - aromatics: cinnamon bark, whole cloves, star anise or vanilla beans, as preferred - 1½ cups sugar Simmer the sugar with 2 cups of water, stirring gently, until the sugar has dissolved completely. Take off the heat and add another 2½ cups of water. Leave to cool. While the liquid is cooling, soak the rubber rings in warm water for 15 minutes or so. Wash six No. 20 jars and six No. 3 lids in hot soapy water, and rinse well. When the rings are ready, slip a ring over the rim of each jar, ensuring the ring is not twisted. Choose your aromatics; I made one batch with cloves and another with cinnamon. Place your aromatics into each bottle. Halve then quarter the plums, pitting as you go. Pack the plum quarters, periodically shaking the bottle, or bumping it against the palm of your hand, to ensure the best pack. Leave a 1.2cm headspace. Fill with your chosen preserving liquid to 1.2cm from the rim. Check for air bubbles, and ease them out with a flexible butter knife or a packing stick. Top up with a little extra liquid, if necessary. Then follow the final instructions. Finally: Fit the lid, and slip the clip over the lid. Say the last sentence three times fast. Place in your preserver. I have the Fowler's Simple Natural Preserving Kit, which fits six No. 27 or No. 20 bottles; or five No. 31 bottles. Cover with cold water, turn on, then turn off after an hour. If it comes to the boil during the hour, do not let it boil for longer than five minutes. Remove the jars from the preserver, using those tricky tongs, and place onto a wooden board or a thick pile of newspapers. Press down in the centre of each lid to ensure a good seal. Leave to stand for 12 to 18 hours, then remove the clips. Label the jars – include the date! – and put them into a low dark cupboard, preferably in a cool part of the house. Preserves keep for a couple of years, but they are best used within one year. After a year, the colour and texture begin to deteriorate. (Local: plums, wine. Not local: sugar, spices.)

Canned Apples

Question: What does a mother into seasonal eating do when she sees a basket of slightly wonky organic apples for $2 a kilo?

Answer: She buys 8 kilos. She spends the afternoon corralling kids to spin the apple machine – which peels, cores and slices all at once! – while she trims away a few bad bits. She then tosses the pieces into her enormous pasta pot set over low heat. When the apples are lightly stewed, she cans the lot, all the while gloating that next month's dessert is just minutes away!

In a family of five, with lots of visitors, dessert is a fairly regular event at our house. We eat apple cobbler and apple crumble; Apple Charlotte and apple dappy; apple pie and apple tart; and, on high holy days with family and friends, Amber Apple: a tart case filled with stewed apples and topped with a five-inch high cloud of meringue. Oh, it's good.

Each of these desserts starts with stewed apple – and most of these desserts takes just minutes to make if the apples are ready to go.

Whenever I stew, I use a mixture of apples. Some varieties collapse into puree; others hold their shape. By using several varieties, I end up with firm slices suspended in puree, which is, to my mind, ideal.

Sliced apples discolour quickly. However, by holding the saucepan at low heat, you can chop your apples and throw them straight into the pan over a 20 or 30 minute period. As they begin cooking straightaway, they don't discolour. Add a splash of water to the pot at the beginning, to keep everything moist, and stir regularly, lifting puree up from the bottom so that it doesn't stick and burn.

I don't sweeten the apples, as I usually find stewed apples quite sweet enough.

Incidental rhetorical question: Why do we call it 'canning' when what we are doing is putting them into glass jars?

Canned Apples This makes 4 No. 31 jars in the Fowler's system. Always follow the instructions of your preserving method; these instructions are for the Fowler's Vacola system. - 7 kg apples, in a mixture of varieties - a lemon Peel, core and chop the apples, throwing the pieces as they're prepared into a large pasta pot set over low heat. Early on, add a splash of water and the juice of a lemon. Stir regularly, scraping up puree from the bottom of the pot to prevent it from sticking. When the apples are lightly stewed, take off the heat. Leave to cool. From this point, you can freeze them or can them. Since freezing requires no instructions, I'll tell you how to can them instead. The advantage of canning over freezing is that the finished product is not affected by interruptions to the power supply; it lasts for years; and you don't have to defrost before you use the contents. Thus endeth the lesson. Soak the rubber rings in warm water for 15 minutes or so. While they are soaking, wash your jars in hot soapy water. 6 to 7 kilos of stewed apples, trimmed, fills four Fowler's No. 31 jars. Slip a rubber ring over the rim of each wet jar, ensuring it is not twisted. Fill the jars with apples, leaving a ½ inch gap between the apples and the top of the jar. Put the lid on (first checking that it has no rust), then slip the clip over the lid. Place in your preserver. I have the Fowler's el cheapo but fantastic model, the Simple Natural Preserving Kit*; lucky you if you have the bigger deluxe model. My preserver fits four No. 31 jars, five if you're squishy. Cover with cold water, turn on, then turn off after an hour. If it comes to the boil during the hour, do not let it boil for longer than five minutes. Remove the jars from the preserver, using those tricky tongs, and place onto a wooden board or a pile of newspapers. Press down in the centre of each lid to ensure a good seal. Leave to stand for 12 to 18 hours, then remove the clips. Label the jars – include the date! – and put them into a low dark cupboard, preferably in a cool part of the house. (I fantasize about having a cellar, or at least a preserves cupboard.) Preserves keep for a couple of years, but they are best used within one year. After a year, the colour and texture begin to deteriorate. You can of course add spices to the jars. I don't, only because I never know until the day I use them whether I'm in the mood for cinnamon, ginger or cloves. *Actually, this smaller preserver is just the right size for us as I tend to process 'small' batches ie only 8 kg at a time. When tomato season comes around and I want to process more, I just process several nights in a row to make the year's supply of canned tomatoes and tomato sauce. Incidentally, night time is a good time to run the preserver, as the kids are in bed so there is no danger of burns. (Local: apples, lemon.)

Quince Marmalade, and Heavenly Baked Apples

I stuck my head deep into the preserves cupboard looking for jam, and found a long-forgotten jar of quince marmalade. More than two years old, it was still a lovely pink, and had retained its heady scent and delicate flavour. So we had toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch, with a good blob of marmalade on the side; and baked apples stuffed with quince for dinner. I dotted the apples with a bit of butter, and poured a little water into the pan in which they stood. Some of the marmalade oozed out of the apples and combined with the butter and water to make a luscious sticky syrup, which I scraped up and drizzled over the apples before serving.

Before you sniff that marmalade is made with citrus fruit, let me tell you that, according to no less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary, the word 'marmalade' has its roots in the Portuguese word 'marmelo', or quince. From this came 'marmelada', referring to quince preserves (jam or paste), and from there, the English 'marmalade'.

Although it's a bit late for quinces, there are still a few bobbing around the markets. If you find some, put them in a bowl in your kitchen; the room will fill with their aroma. You can enjoy their scent for a few deliciously fragrant days before making marmalade.

Quince Marmalade - 4 respectably heavy quinces, about 750g - 4 cups sugar - 3 cups water - juice and grated zest of an orange Rub the fuzz off the fruit, core them, then grate them coarsely. A food processor is the easiest way. If you are using a hand grater, really gouge the fruit into the grater to get good thick threads. Alternatively, julienne the fruit, cutting it into slender even strips. Bring the sugar and water to a boil and stir to dissolve the sugar. Add the quinces. They will float, so stir and push them under the water with a wooden spoon until they sink. Add the orange zest, turn down the heat, and leave to simmer very gently for 1½ hours, or until the quinces have turned deep pink. Leave to cool overnight. The next day, add the orange juice and bring back to the boil. Turn down the heat and cook gently for another hour or so, or until you have a wet marmalade. Pour into clean sterilized jars and seal. Adapted from a recipe by Deborah Madison in The Savory Way. (Local: quince, orange. Not local: sugar.)

Beetroot Relish

To my daughters:

Once upon a time, before my time or your time, my mother – your grandmother – lived with her two younger sisters in a little brick house at the end of a sandy track. Her daddy went out to work every day, and her mummy stayed home with the three little girls. Her mummy cooked and cleaned and washed and sewed. She shopped from the tradesmen who drove their vans to the other end of the track, or she walked to the local shops, three little girls hanging off the pram as its wheels bogged down in the sand. She made everything from scratch.

On Sundays, they rested. Nobody picked up a needle or turned on the oven, and the little girls kept their voices quiet. They ate cold meat and vegetables for lunch, to keep the Sabbath holy.

One day at the local shop, her mummy saw something new. It was beetroot in a can! "Wonderful!" she thought, "that's one less job." She bought the can, and smuggled it home in the bottom of the pram under the rest of the shopping. That Sunday in the kitchen, she opened the can, tipped the contents into the beet bowl, and served it without comment. No one noticed, so she gave up pickling beets and switched to canned beets instead.

Several years later, her husband happened to wander into the kitchen as they were preparing lunch. He saw the open can of beets on the table, and reeled with shock. "What's this?" he gasped, "why aren't you making your usual beetroot?".

And his youngest daughter looked at him, puzzled, and asked, "But how else does it come?".

Secret women's business, indeed.

Fifty years later, in honour of my grandmother, who died last month, and in honour of my grandfather, who has closed his eyes and is waiting to join her, I have rolled up my sleeves and turned my kitchen pink. Here is my recipe for beetroot relish – like everything I do, not how they did it, but faithful nonetheless.

Beetroot Relish - 1¼ kg beets, peeled and grated (I used a food processor) - 1½ cups apple cider vinegar - ½ cup balsamic vinegar - 250g brown sugar - 2 small red onions, finely chopped - ½ tsp salt - 2 oranges, zested and juiced (optional) Place the vinegars and sugar into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Add the other ingredients and bring back to the boil, then simmer gently for 50 minutes, stirring from time to time, until syrupy. Pour into hot sterilized jars (I use the baby bottle sterilizer; Nigella Lawson suggests that running jars through the dishwasher is sufficient), and seal. Store in a cool dark place. Good with fetta or a crumbly cheddar, with a plate of mixed salads, or, if you're so inclined, with a bit of red meat. (Local: beetroot, red onion, orange, apple cider vinegar. Not local: balsamic vinegar, sugar, salt.)

Lemon Butter

My mother had mixed feelings about lemon butter. She had been told that undercooked eggs were unhealthy and dangerous, probably crawling with microbes – and yet she loved it. So she'd never make the stuff and 'tsk' when she saw it at the church fete, then buy it anyway and slather it on her crumpets. In the same way, she'd let us lick out a cake bowl, all the while fretting aloud that we'd come down with listeria or salmonella or some other nasty little bug from raw egg. We never did.

Me, I'm not worried. We get eggs fresh from a farm, and my daughters and I always make sure there's enough cake batter left to get a good scrape each with the spatula. And I even make my own lemon butter.

I tend to make it at night when the house is quiet. Although it's quick and easy, it requires vigilance; and it brings on a precious meditative state which I prefer not to have interrupted by short people.

If you're making a single quantity and intend to eat it quick, wash your jars in very hot soapy water, then pop them in a cool oven to dry completely before filling with lemon butter. That's what I did until I had babies and you can too – just don't blame me if you get food poisoning. These days, however, I sterilize my jam jars. I have a baby bottle steam sterilizer needing a new job, and it fits four jam jars rather nicely. It's the one advantage I know of having bottle-fed babies!

Lemon butter keeps for a month or two in a cool place. Once the jar is opened, store it in the fridge.

Lemon Butter - 2 large juicy lemons, or 3 not so juicy lemons - 100g unsalted butter - 175g sugar, and it must be refined white sugar; brown sugar will turn a delicate trembling little butter into an unattractive brown sludge - 3 eggs, lightly beaten Grate the zest from the lemons, or zest the lemons then chop the ribbons into tiny segments. Juice the lemons. Place the zest and the juice into a heavy-based saucepan with the butter and sugar. Heat gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Take off the heat and leave to cool a little. Add the eggs through a strainer, and mix to incorporate. Place back onto a gentle heat and stir constantly until the mixture has thickened. You must not let it boil, or it will curdle and separate. The moment it looks velvety, take it off the heat, and pour into hot jars. This makes enough for two medium jars: one for you, and one for the neighbour who gave you the lemons. At least, that's how it works in our house. Spread it on toast or crumpets, or use it to make little lemon tarts. A traditional recipe; I use the proportions from The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander. (Local: lemons, eggs. Non-local: butter, sugar.)