Mint overload

My mum gave her mint plants a radical haircut, and presented me with half a black garbage bag of mint stems!  Waste not, want not, so I have made (or am in the process of making):

Mint syrup (part 1), mint jelly  (9 jars)

 Dried mint (10 trays worth!) and about a litre of mint sauce

 

I guess it is lucky there is plenty of lamb in the freezer!

DIY sultanas

Last month we harvested almost 15kg of grapes. Far too many to eat, too many to just turn into jelly, and we don't drink much grape juice (unless it is the alcoholic variety!). What to do? I decided to get out the dehydrator and try making sultanas.

I craqzed the grapes briefly (dip in very hot water) to crack the skins to assist in the dehydrating process, then left them in the dehydrator for about 24 hours (some a bit longer - probably didn't craze as well). We ended up with three decent sized jars of rather tasty home made sultanas. Slightly tarter than the shop bought variety, although th egreen grapes were sweeter than the red ones. Perfect for the winter porridge season!

Aaaah Mr Slater, you make exceptionally fine cakes

Well, technically I made the cake, but it was Nigel's recipe...Nigel bills it as a 'pudding cake' of honey, cinnamon and plums. Jerry and I aren't big fans of cinnamon, but I thought ginger would work so I used that instead and it was perfect. Gave it a rich gingerbreadlike taste that really complimented the plums. The recipe calls for fresh fruit but I used home grown canned plums from last year.

I served it cool with some extra thick cream, but custard would also be very good on a cold evening (or, if you're Jerry, on any evening!).

The recipe is from Tender Vol 2,  and because I'm lazy you can find it here or here. I think the muscovado sugar really adds to the rich spicyness of the cake, so I encourage you to use if it you can get your hands on some.

DIY Vinegar

My mini vinegar distillery is expanding. So far I've made red wine (using local organic wine), chardonnay, sav blanc and even prosecco vinegar (which was very tasty). I've even managed to produce enough to use in my own chutney. The mothers keep on producing so I can keep expanding production, as well as give some away. I'm looking forward to experimenting more with different acidity, and also making some cider vinegar with some local cider.

My home made vingear is softer and smoother, and more flavoursome than shop bought. Brilliant for using in dressings or gravies. It is very easy to make too. I bought my mother from the excellent green living australia , and use their instructions. The great thing is that as you make vinegar, you produce more mother cultures that you can then transfer to start new batches.If you haven't tried making your own vinegar then I recommend it - it's very easy and doesn't require any special equipment once you have your mother culture.

Tomato time

So far this season I have harvested about 27kg of tomatoes. It has been a bit hit and miss - the romas and Marzanos have really bad blossom end rot, but the ox hearts in the same bed are fine. The beefsteak varieties are going great guns, as are the grape and cherry red pear varieties.

27kg sounds like loads, right? Well, not really. You see I try to grow enough tomatoes to last the whole year. I fact I have not bought tinned tomatoes for about 4 years now. But to be self sufficient in "tinned" tomatoes, you need to grow a LOT. Of the picked tomatoes I'd say I have preserved about 24kg. The romas and a few others I roasted and then ran through the mouli for a kind of passata, and the rest I have preserved as halves or chopped tomatoes. I have about 11 litres from that, which is roughly equal to about 22 tins of tomatoes. Now if you use 2-3 tins a week, which we can easily do, that is less than 3 months worth of tomatoes. And that does not include tomato paste...which you need a lot more tomatoes for. In fact I normally buy a 10kg box of seconds to make my paste, but I'm not sure I will be doing that this year. And then there are the tomatoes for salsa, semi dried and chutney......

So that's why I will be happier if the end of the season the harvest is more like 100kg. But even then it won't be enough to make everything. This self sufficiency stuff - even on a small scale - is hard work.

 

Pickled radishes

As work plus uni plus a real need for soil improvement means that our garden will be limited this summer, we're getting our veg from a local organic CSA this season. This means that sometimes you get things you wouldn't normally grow or eat. Radishes are one of those things. After 2 weeks of radish bunches we had way more than we could use before they were beyond their 'use by' date. Fortunately I remembered reading a recipe for pickled radishes on David Leibowitz's excellent blog here Pickled Radishes | David Lebovitz.

And of course then I forgot about them in the back of the fridge. They were rediscovered today and we had our first taste....MAGIC! Crunchy and flavoursome, they will be brilliant on a cheese platter or plate of mixed nibbles. I highly recommend giving them a try next time radishes are in season where you live.

 

It's berry and currant season again

15 jars of jelly made so far, so only just beginning.......

Curing the garlic

I've harvested 185 heads of garlic so far, and there are another 15 or so still in the ground in various spots. As it is so hot here today I have them in the sun to start curing.

I think we will be vampire free for another year :-)

 

Fruity weekend

Our peach tree has been dropping almost ripe fruit for the last week or so. Rather than waste it I decided to make a batch of chutney. I chose a recipe from the Ball complete book of home preserving - Caribbean peach chutney. It smells pretty good!

 

Our neighbours down the road as usual have too many damson plums this year - so while Jerry enjoyed a refreshing dip after a hot day, I picked 2 buckets of fruit. Today it's cooler and raining, so out with the steam juicer and to work. 1 bucket gave almost 6 litres of juice. I've used 2.4 L to make jelly (9 jars) and the rest I'll preserve in the fowlers for more cordial or jam making later in the year. I'm in the process of juicing the rest

Next week my uni course starts - so I'll be working part time, gardening and preserving the harvest part time, studying part time and looking after Jerry (full time!!). So needless to say my idea of doing the weekly independence day challenge has fallen by the wayside!! I have no aspirations to be superwoman :-). I'm already thinking of dropping back to just one subject this session to ease myself back into study. After all, the tomatoes and fruit won't wait until I have time to do bottling.

I hope you've all had a good weekend

More preserving and some good neighbours

This morning I cleared out one of the tomato beds - which left me with 10+ kilos of green tomatoes to deal with - so I'm making the first of many batches of green tomato chutney...although it might be ripe tomato chutney by the end of the week! I also made a batch of honey pickled jalapenos - I'll be interested to see how they taste in a few months. There are still more jalapenos on the chilli bushes too.

 A few kilos of ripe tomatoes went into the dehydrator

Last weekend our new neighbour bought over one of his many toys - an hydraulic log splitter. What a great toy!!  In about 1.5 hours we had split and stacked 2 trees worth of wood. Genius!

 Some of this years pumpkin harvest. Yum

Been busy

and this will give you an idea why - 175 kg of produce so far this year, not including leafy greens and herbs

The apples are all from the tree that the parrots normally eat bare, but there were so many this year we actually have a few! I've been working the steam juicer overtime making a range of apple jellies. Apple and mint, apple and ginger, and apple, ginger and chilli - using home grown thai chilli powder. It's hot but lovely. Made 8 jars of that yesterday, along with 6 smallish jars of apple purée plus 4 jars of roasted tomato purée. The pantry is starting to really fill up now!

Basic Apple Jelly Recipe

Once you have your juice (either via steam juicer or the normal cook with some water then strain through muslin overnight method - or even bought pure juice) add 450g sugar to every 600ml juice. I also added in a 7-8cm piece of ginger (grated), and a sprinke of chilli powder. Other alternatives are just ginger, or mint (add in near the end of boiling time) or even just plain apple. Stir over a low heat until sugar is fully disolved, then boil rapidly until setting point is reached, pour into jars and seal via your preferred method and seal.

Last but not least we got our first double yolker a week or so ago - from a massive 88g egg!

Adventures in fermentation - Kimchi

The lovely Jerry gave me The joy of pickling for my birthday last week, and then some friends gave us a lovely home grown cabbage, so I decided to try making some kimchi (Korean fermented cabbage). I've always enjoyed it in Korean restaurants and it seems simple to make and keeps for ages.

There are several recipes in the book, but I decided to start with the basic. Step 1 was to make a brine of 3 tablespoons of sea salt and 6 cups of water. Then core the cabbage and cut into large cubes (2 inches / 5cm).
Combine cabbage and brine in a large non-reactive dish (ie not metal), weight the top with a plate and leave stand for about 12 hours.

The next day drain the cabbage and reserve the brine (you will need that in a minute). To the cabbage add 1 1/2 tablespoons ginger (minced or grated) and 1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic (I bashed mine in a mortar and pestle). The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons korean chilli powder which is apparently not very hot. I used about 1/2 teaspoon of my home grown thai chilli powder - which is hot). At this point it's already smelling DIVINE (even Jerry agrees). Put the cabbage mix into a large jar (2L size, or a 1.5l and a 350ml one like me!) and just cover the cabbage with the reserved brine. Then put a food grade plastic bag in the jar and fill with brine to create a weight to keep the cabbage in the brine and allow to ferment  in a cool place (no more than than 20 (68F)) for 3-5 days. Not the fridge though as that is too cold for fermentation to occur. As it's summer here I'm using my cheese fridge, which I can keep at about 15-16.

Here's how it looks today - I'll post an update in 3-5 days :-)

If you're interesting in learning more about fermented foods then Sandor Katz's wild fermentation site is the place to start.

This post was part of Fight back Friday (even though it was a Sunday LOL)

Homegrown chilli powder - a revelation

Last year we had a bumper crop of small thai chillies - called purple tiger. The dried very well in the dehydrator, and then I put the jars in the cupboard and I'm embarrassed to say forgot about them !

Last week I needed some chilli powder and didn't have any ...until I remembered these dried chillies. So into the spice blender attachment of the kenwood they went and a few seconds later voila, home made chilli powder.

What a flavour revelation!! The powder is HOT, so you don't need much, but it is a flavoursome hot. It's not a "hit over the head with a 2x4" kind of all heat that some commercial chilli powders are. It has a depth and character - almost a fruity heat. Just fabulous. I can grind just enough to last a month or so and always have fresh chilli powder.

What's even better -with another 2 jars in the cupboard I won't run out anytime soon! I have also dried some jalapenos so I will be interested to make some powder from them to compare.

btw the spice storage containers (right pic) I have are from Tablefare and I love them! Jerry found them for me as a Christmas present and they have been brilliant. They come from the US, but the lovely Tablefare people shipped them over for Jerry specially (we were their first Australian order) and he said they were a pleasure to deal with.  With the Aussie dollar so strong against the US dollar I'm seriously considering getting a few more.

Happy New Year everyone

For the first day of the new year my true love gave to me 9.5kg of brambleberries......

The advantages of getting out into the garden at 7:30am!! So after a morning of mulching in the garden, a trip to the farmer's market and a celebratory brunch of french toast with bacon and maple syrup at a local cafe, I spent much of the rest of today making brambleberry jam and brambleberry jelly. 18 jars later I STILL have about 2kg to deal with tomorrow. So far we've picked 21 kg and there are still more to come! Brambleberries certainly fruit better in the second year (they had a radical haircut mid 2009 and we only got about 6kg from them last year) so I think we might do the same this year and have a smaller brambleberry year next year. We will certainly have enough to freeze a good few kilos.

I also took the opportunity to take a few garden snaps so you can see how things are progressing. I'm amazed to see so much green in January.

The tomato beds have new higher hoop frames with shadecloth - the higher hoops do make it much easier to work in the bed. The tomatoes have started fruiting as well.

Oca, yacon, peas and beans and the peach tree. Peppers, chilli, eggplant, pumpkin and courgette...and some rogue potatoes!

HURRAH!! There are pumpkins! I really want to end the season with more than 6 this year. These are the Red Kuri variety that grow to 1.5-2kg - a perfect size for 2 people - and they keep well.

Seed pod on the nigella

On the harvest front for this season (starting Dec 10) we have

• 21 kg brambleberries
• 8.4kg redcurrants (made into vinegar, jelly and some frozen for summer puddings)
• 1.8kg blackcurrants (made into jelly)
• 1.1kg boysenberries
• 200g raspberry (just starting)
• 220g loganberries
• 1.5kg runner beans
• plus sugar snap and snow peas and wild rocket

I am looking forward to some tasty home grown tomatoes in a few weeks though!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy 2011.

The beginning of berry madness 2010

Well, brambleberry madness has started - Jerry picked just over 6 kg last night so needless to say I've been cooking today - I only managed a berry tea cake and some just under 3L of berry cordial - that only took care of 2kg of berries, and I froze about 1kg. I'll need to make some more jam tomorrow

The 7 year scarlett runner beans from last year that re-sprouted a month or so ago have started producing beans - picked just over 1/2 kilo today.  It's nice to finally be getting something from the garden after the spring "hungry gap"