‘I prefer custard on mine’ …. I hear you reply!
Popping by the allotment, it is lovely to see the knobbly buds of rhubarb starting to push their way through. There is a rabbit nibbling problem at present, and like an arm wrestle between vegetable and animal, currently teetering in the rabbits favour, I’m confident that once the rhubarb gets a spurt on, the plants will win hands down and see off the fluffy predator.
The plot is fast beginning to resemble the national rhubarb collection, as I just can’t resist adding another variety when I come across one, conveniently forgetting that each crown will eventually take up a wacking great amount of space as it becomes established. Ho hum, who cares? All these varieties rarely mean much difference as regards taste, but for a rhubarb nerd it means you can admire the subtle variations of habit and leaf shape.
One variety I sought out especially, having grown it before on my London plot, is Livingstone, named after Red Ken. This variety is particularly useful as it has had the dormancy bred out of it, so gives a crop right through until the first frosts, unlike the others that you should stop picking in the summer months. You aren’t likely to find Livingstone for sale as it is produced under license so shouldn’t be propogated as the rights belong to the breeder, who I bought the original cultivar from, then years later tracked him down again and begged him to send me another crown (it is amazing how begging usually does the trick).
This is why there is no need to import rhubarb in the UK. We have the varieties available to harvest, virtually all year round. It always amazes me when I see rhubarb for sale in Tesco imported from New Zealand. My nearest independent greengrocers, usually sell Dutch rhubarb as the much lauded Yorkshire stuff is hard to source at the market or when found is too expensive for them. Now in my second year on the plot, I should be self sufficient in the stuff very soon, so such concerns will be for others to wrangle over.
It’s great that rhubarb is seeing a renaissance. I hadn’t eaten forced rhubarb until fairly recently, so I loved it before all the guff about not stewing it and that only the sweeter pink stems are worth having, bla-di-bla. The pinker it is the prettier it looks and you can juice it too, but for a diehard rhubarb fan brought up on stronger stuff, it is simply an hors d’oeuvres, leading the way to the main course.
Luckily, as one of my favourite flavours, when it comes to rhubarb, if you say ‘glut’ then I say ‘bring it on’. I may well become famous for my rhubarb ketchup, one day, but in the mean time here is a recipe for pink grapefuit, rhubarb and cardamom marmalade that I developed last year that usefully has a longer seasonal ‘window’ that the usual Seville orange sort and also just happens to taste great. The recipe doubles up fine if you want to make a bigger batch.

PINK GRAPEFRUIT, RHUBARB & CARDAMOM MARMALADE

Makes approx 1.3Kg (3 lbs)

0.5Kg (1.1 lb) rhubarb
1kg (2.2lbs) sugar
juice of 1 lemon
seeds from 10-13 cardamom pods, crushed
3 pink grapefruits, approx 750g (1.65 lb )

Rinse the rhubarb stems and chop into 1cm (1/2 in) evenly sized pieces. Place them in a bowl with the sugar and lemon juice. Tie the cardamom seeds in a piece of muslin and push them inbetween the rhubarb, then cover with baking paper or clingfilm and leave for a few hours or overnight, so the juices begin to soak into the sugar.
Wash the grapefruit and remove the peel with a sharp knife or potato peeler, leaving as much of the pith on the fruit as possible. Finely cut the peel into shreds. Squeeze the fruits and collect the juice and tie the remaining pulp, pith and pips together in a muslin bundle. Place the shreds, juice and bundle in a pan, add 1.4ltr (2 1/2pt) water and simmer for 1 1/2 - 2 hours until the peel is cooked through and tender. Remove the muslin bundle and, when cool enough to handle, squeeze the juice from it back into the pan, then discard. Pour the peel through a sieve and collect and measure the liquid, adding more water if necessary to make it up to 1ltr (1 3/4 pts).
Prepare the jars and canner if you plan to hot water process the marmalade, otherwise, make sure your jars and lids are clean and place them in a warm oven to heat and sterilise. Place the cooked shreds, cooking liquid and the contents of the rhubarb bowl in a preserving pan and bring slowly to the boil, stirring to make sure all the sugar is dissolved. Bring to a rolling boil and cook on a high heat until setting point is reached, that is when a small blob of the syrup on a cold plate quickly forms a skin when you run your finger across the surface. Remove the cardamom bundle.
Fill the jars, leaving the appropriate amount of headroom for canning, and seal. Hot water process for 10 minutes, then remove from the canner, leave till cold and test that the lids are sealed. Label and store. Alternatively, without canning, place waxed paper discs on the surface of the marmalade and seal. This marmalade should store safely without canning, but hot water processing will make doubly sure that your jam will keep and store without a hitch.

The marmalade making season is now full on. I don’t need a whole cupboard full of Seville orange marmalade, just around 8-10 jars will keep me going throughout the year and a few jars for my Mum. I have a couple of other marmalade recipes I like to make as well, so there is never a shortage in my house. Last year I made my lemon, fig & lavender maramalade and pink grapefruit, rhubarb and cardamon , especially to enter in the Marmalade festival at Dalemain Mansion, Nr Penrith. The lemon, fig & lavender marmalade didn’t score too well at the festival, even though it has been a big hit elsewhere, has been chosen to be included in a canning book out later in the year in Canada, and provided the inspiration for a few other canners who tweaked the instructions to suit themselves but came back with a resounding thumbs up. It is quite a robust marmalade and perhaps just wasn’t citrussy enough for the Dalemain judges. I did receive a little scorecard back after the event but unfortunately it has become lost in the mists of time on my desk, so I can tell you no more than that.

The pink grapefruit, rhubarb & cardamon marmalade did quite well in the ‘romantic’ category and has now become a running joke in my family as the scorecard said ‘nice try’. But it is the taking part that is important and Dalemain has become such a well publicised event for all sorts of worthy reasons that I would encourage anyone to participate and if possible go there and see what an extraordinary sight it is; tables laden with more jars of glowing amber preserves than you can possibly imagine in a grand English stately home setting. The event is now so well established that jars are sent in from all over the world, with entries from Japan, Australia and the US. Last year the tally was over 650 entries from amateur makers with a third of those entries being from men.

In last years Clergy class, despite divine intervention, Mr Ingham was let down by his ‘peel slightly undercooked’.

The categories have changed this year, so alongside category 1, ‘thin cut Seville orange marmalade’, category 6 has a ‘peers & political’ theme, and category 7 a ‘military’ vibe. I imagine the titles are open to interpretation, but last years ‘B & B’ category (not included this year) was for boarding house proprietors and ‘clergy’ (included again this year) is presumably for right reverends men (and women) of the cloth or their housekeepers. Anyway, I’m fancying category 11, ‘inventive’ and perhaps some trad thin cut Seville this year. You can find my recipe for this classic here.

The Marmalade Festival at Dalemain Mansion, Nr Penrith, Cumbria takes place Saturday 12th & Sunday 13th February 2011 10am-4pm See their website here for more information and to download the form to accompany your entry, which needs to reach them by 6th February. The event is held in aid of the Hospice at Home, Carlisle and North Lakeland.
You can also find details on the website of special events taking place with Pam ‘the jam’ Corbin demonstrating how make the perfect marmalade and Dan Lepard, baker extraordinaire, showing how to make the perfect loaf to serve with it.

Dan Lepard, as country farmer amongst the aconites at Dalemain, 2010.

2010 was the year I learnt about canning, or bottling, or hot water processing stuff in jars, whatever you want to call it. Following the year through ingredients, working with the seasons and the produce that was close to hand, has given me a real feeling of connection to the food that I eat and has changed my life and my approach to preserving. Not only that, I’ve got a cupboard full of food in jars, a sort of mini pantry, as my house is too small to include a special room or larder. Granted, most people don’t have shelves of bottled comestibles in their sitting room or lined up on the sideboard! See my friend Tigress’s recent post about her pantry ( the Domestic Goddess is sooo last century, now chatelaine in the buzz word!) and Dana and Joel’s great wall of preserves, in their city apartment. So you see it isn’t necessarily about having a special room in your house or living in the country.

*From now on I am going to refer to the bottling and preservation of ingredients using a hot water bath process as ‘canning’. You’ve been told. I know that in the UK this causes some confusion as the assumption is that this infers putting food in tin cans, but I am talking about preserving food in glass jars. OK have we got that straight now?

The biggest surprise for me has been how amazing the flavours of canned food can be. I grew up thinking that only fresh was best and that bottled, tinned and stored foods were second rate and down market. What I have learnt during my first canning year has totally blown that notion out of the water.
Now the year has swung full circle and there is a feeling of beginning again, its time to take store and note the successes - the rhubarb ketchup, black grape chilli jam and lemon fig & lavender marmalade I want to always keep a stock of. But more importantly I want to plan my goals for the year ahead. Plant blueberry bushes on the allotment to produce enough fruit to preserve, thus bypassing those ridiculously expensive and tweeny-weeny cartons you get in the supermarket, and too plant an asparagus bed so that a few years hence I will be able to harvest my own crop.
It is about pacing things, their needs to be a correlation between the amount of food stored and the rate it is consumed. There will always be some experimentation going on, but as well as enjoying the satisfaction of a well stocked cupboard I love the moment the spoon scrapes the bottom of the jar, each empty jar offering the opportunity to be filled anew. In the year ahead I will be using my preserved foods as ingredients for baking and to include as part of other delicious meals.

As well as jams and chutneys, I’ve got cordials, compotes and fruit purees and pickles stacked on my shelves. Today for lunch I popped open a jar of salted caramel pear butter and another of squashed Blaisdon plums. A dollop of each plus some homemade yogurt (and a tiny sprinkling of hazelnut praline on the top just to be flash) made a really delicious snack. The important thing about these preserves is that they aren’t laden with sugar in the same way that jam usually is. This is why canning makes such sense.
Sorry! This post was supposed to be about making homemade yogurt, but it has changed into something else. I’ll do the yogurt thing later as it seems a strange diversion to go there now and I’ve got other things I need to get on with. Anyone picking this up by Googling will be well annoyed.

Month twelve, the very last Tigress’s can jam canning challenge and for December the ingredient chosen by the wonderous Tigress herself, who set the whole ball rolling in the first place, is dried fruits in all their jewelled and seasonal glory. Must admit, apart from chutneys, don’t think I’ve ever used dried fruits in my preserves so this is new for me.
Yet again Fancy Pantry by Helen Witty, my all time favourite book, provided the inspiration. Her dried apricot & amaretto conserve sounded just perfect to meet the criteria of this months challenge, though I’m not a fan of adding alcohol to my jams. Well I say I’m not, that should be, I wasn’t. Over the last year I have discovered how a little splash of kirsch takes sour cherries from quite nice to amazing. Likewise a spoonful of calvados added to apple butter, or some Cointreau poured over squashed plums can take mundane to magnificent, adding something not necessarily consciously alcoholic but that somehow completes the balance of flavours in a wonderful way.
This did mean I had to shell out for a bottle of Amaretto, the down side of acquiring a stock of liqueurs, they don’t come cheap. Thankfully, this jam turned out even better than expected, really special in fact, so now I’ve got plenty of the ingredients left to make more of the same to give as presents. I added fresh cranberries to my jam which are great not only for their flavour and seasonality but for the lovely colour they bring. After I’d made the jam and started to think what it would go well with, ‘warm croissants’ absolutely shouted out to me.

I have opted for bright orange sulphured apricots over the darker unsulphured variety for my jam because I can’t bear the thought of starting out with dark brown fruit. It doesn’t bode well in my mind, brown fruit can only get doomier as it cooks, and for a special holiday preserve you want to push the boat out a bit. This preserve could take even less sugar that I used. I did a sugar test on it using a refractrometer and found that it contained 57%. For a preserve to store well without canning, it should be nearer to 65%, so if you aren’t into canning and want to be sure this jam will store in the pantry for any length of time without worrying it will go mouldy, I’d advise you to up the sugar content from 450g to 600g, but taste wise it doesn’t benefit from it. The added alcohol will also help to act as a preservative. This jam tastes so good it most likely wont hang around long enough anyway. If you are not into canning, this should make it obvious why canning is so brilliant. You can preserve using less sugar so the overriding flavour of your jam is the fruit it contains, not sugar. Preaching over, here’s the recipe.

APRICOT, CRANBERRY AND AMARETTO JAM

Makes approx 1.4Kg (3 lbs) jam

225g (8oz) dried apricots
150g (5 1/2oz) golden sultanas or raisins
0.90 ltr (3 1/2 cups) water
225g (8oz) fresh cranberries
1 1/2 tsp grated orange zest
0.25ltr (1 cup) freshly squeezed orange juice
2Tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice
450g (3 cups) sugar
3Tbsp Amaretto liqueur

Chop the apricots into small evenly-shaped pieces. Place them in a bowl with the sultanas and pour over 0.75ltr (3 cups) water. Leave to soak overnight.
Next day, prepare the water bath, jars and seals ready for canning. For more info about how to hot water process, refer to the guide here. Place the cranberries in a pan with the remaining water and simmer gently for 15-20 minutes until the fruits have popped and are cooked through. Leave to cool slightly, then add all of the remaining ingredients (including soaking liquid) except the Amaretto.
Stir to dissolve the sugar and once it has, turn up the heat to a rolling boil and bring the jam to setting point (took me about 10-15 minutes), that is when a dollop on a cold plate readily forms a skin that wrinkles when you push your finger over the surface. Remove from the heat and leave to cool for a few minutes then stir in the Amaretto. Pour into hot sterilised jars, seal and process for 10 minutes. Remove from the water bath and leave till completely cold before testing the seals and labelling.

IT’S A WRAP

Well that’s it. A whole year of the Tigresscanjam completed and wow, it has been amazing. I intend to write another post soon to round up what I’ve learnt and how it has changed my approach to preserving. Thanks to dearest Tigress for taking the time to not only oversee the challenge and the monthly roundups but for asking me to take part. To think that this experience could have passed me by …. well what can I say, how foolish I would have been without that gentle nudge.
I have found all you other canjammers participating truly inspiring. Thanks to all of you for helping me learn so much. As well as introducing me to Meyer lemons, Concorde grapes and Seckel pears, ingredients I will no doubt spend the rest of my life trying to experience first hand, amongst other things, too many to mention here, I’ve got over a few hangups I had about American-isms (and Canadian-isms if there is such a thing) such as ‘canning’. We are of course divided by a common language and as the only Brit taking part, I hope that you’ve likewise picked up some of the flavour of our approach to ‘bottling’ here in the UK. - Love G x

Month eleven, already the penultimate month of Tigress’s can jam canning challenge and for November the ingredient chosen by the talented artisan preserver Confituras aka blogger Cosmic Cowgirl is apples, pears and quince, a versatile selection of orchard fruits with delicious potential.
I could find a gazillion uses for each of these, but have chosen luscious quinces for this canjam contribution. A few days ago I used up the last quince of the year. I always vow to bottle plenty and never seem to achieve my ambition. Once this fruit grabs you, you are totally smitten. Considering how fab they are it surprises me that quince aren’t more popular; they are still seen as an unusual fruit. You have to seek them out and may find a supply at a farmers market, otherwise you need your own quince tree or to know someone else who has one. They take at least 5 years to produce fruit by the way if you are thinking of planting one.
They are one of the few fruits that I love so much, I’d pay real money just for a whiff of, never mind a taste of, each year, though this time was lucky enough to find a supply for free when someone kindly advertised quinces up for grabs on the local Freecycle. I moved at the speed of light to get round to that house, believe me. These Freecyclers had 2 trees heaving with fruit, that were so laden they had had to be propped up with stakes and ropes. It gave me the opportunity to see quinces growing on the tree for the first time and to notice what untidy trees they are to produce such exceptional fruits.
Of course, one of quinces magical qualities, apart from the wonderous unmistakable scent, is the way a hard unpalatable fruit turns delicious at the same time turning such a wonderful shade of deep ruby red as it cooks. I’m generally of the mind that long cooking times are of no benefit to ingredients, but quince turns this notion on its head. You need to slow cook ‘em and slow cook ‘em till they change colour, which can take 3 - 6 hours.

As regards the pantry, I want a supply of quince in spiced vanilla syrup, as straightforward as that. This is when canning makes such perfect sense and in theory allows you to preserve such a fabulous ingredient to last you all year round till the next time, though I haven’t managed that thus far. Preserving enough quince in jars is my ambition. A favourite way to serve them, on oatmeal porridge with Greek yogurt for breakfast. As simple as that. To prepare, they are quite hard work to peel and cut, so don’t expect elegant slices.

POACHED QUINCE IN VANILLA SYRUP

To fill 2 x 500ml (1 pint) jars

6 - 8 quinces
1 lemon
600ml (2 1/2 cups) water
250g (1 cup) sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 vanilla pod
a few cloves

Scrub the quinces to remove the fuzzy coating. Peel, quarter and core the fruit. Cut each quince quarter into 2 or 3 slices, depending on the size of the fruit and immediately drop them into a bowl of acidulated water (water with some lemon juice added, as they discolour very quickly if you don’t).

You can put peel and cores in a pan, cover with water and simmer for 4 hours, topping up with more water if necessary, then pour into a jelly bag, collecting the juice that drips through overnight. You can use this juice to top up the syrup if you find you need more to fill your jars and use what is left to make quince jelly. I also put the pulp left in the jelly bag through a food mill to make a quince puree, so nothing goes to waste.

Preheat the oven to 110 C (225 F, Mk 1/4). Make a sugar syrup by heating the water and sugar together, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Drain and place the quince slices in a large ovenproof casserole, adding the cinnamon stick, cloves, a few pieces of lemon peel and the vanilla pod, after splitting it lengthways and scraping and the seeds out from the middle. Pour the syrup over the fruit and spices. Put the casserole on the hob and bring to the boil then remove from heat. Place a lid on the casserole and cook in the oven for 5 - 6 hours.

Another way to cook the quinces is to use a slow cooker. Place the quince, spices and hot sugar syrup in the slow cooker casserole and cook on high for the first hour, then turn down to low and cook for 6 - 8 hours, by which time the fruit will have turned a deep red wine colour.

Prepare the water bath, jars and seals ready for canning. For more info about how to hot water process, refer to the guide here.
Fill hot jars with quince slices, distributing the spices and vanilla pod amongst the jars and top up with syrup, leaving the required headspace for your type of jars. De-bubble, to remove air pockets, wipe the jar rims clean then seal and process for 15 minutes. Remove from the water bath and leave till completely cold before testing the seals and labelling.

OATMEAL PORRIDGE

For 2 people
100g (1/2 cup) organic medium oatmeal
650ml (3 1/4 cups) water
a pinch of salt

Toast the oatmeal in a pan for a few minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon until you begin to smell the toasted oat aroma. Add the water and salt and bring to a simmer, then cook for 20-30 minutes until thickened as you like it and cooked through, adding more water if necessary. That’s all there is too it!

Bramley Seedling apples are one of the most popular apples grown for cooking in the UK. They are an apple that stores well; if kept in the right conditions they should keep for 6 or 7 months. Even so, I will still be using some to make apple sauce, pie fillings and apple butter, processed in jars to stock the pantry. It is just really convenient to have some jars already to go.
If you have some Bramleys you want to store, choose the best unblemished fruit for longer storage and use up any bruised fruit first. It is usually a good idea to wrap fruits separately in tissue or newspaper, but there is no need to do this with Bramleys, simply arrange them so they aren’t touching each other by placing them in shallow drawers or crates. A dark cool frost-free shed, garage or cellar is the ideal place, preferably with an optimum temperature of 6 - 7 degrees C. Make sure to check them every few weeks and weed out any bad apples before they have any influence on the rest.

Here is another easy recipe that uses more of the same apple puree I made for the apple cake recipe posted yesterday. I’m very partial to cake recipes where the butter is either rubbed into the mixture or melted. Even though I have the help of my trusty vintage Kenwood Chef, I for some reason avoid the creaming the butter and sugar together thing whenever I can. Anyhow, this apple gingerbread cake is perfect for serving in the afternoon with a cup of tea and can be rustled together as quick as a flash if someone decides to call round. I have put a thin layer of ginger icing over the top of the cake. Another alternative that I think could work well would be an apple cider syrup poured over the cake after piercing the top with a skewer. Next time perhaps …

APPLE GINGERBREAD

First make the apple puree:
500g (1lb) bramley or other cooking apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
125ml (1/4 cup) of cider or water
125ml (1/4 cup) maple syrup or sugar to taste

Place the apples in a pan with the cider or water and bring to a simmer, then cook gently for around 20 minutes, until the apples become a fluffy puree when stirred with a spoon. Add the maple syrup or sugar to taste. Leave to cool. This will make slightly more than you will need, but it leaves a bit extra to serve with the gingerbread.

175 g (6 oz) plain flour
2tsp baking powder
1tsp ground ginger
3 cloves, 5 black peppercorns and the seeds from 4 cardamons, ground fine in a pestle and mortar
85g (3oz) brown sugar
100g (4oz) golden syrup (is this what is called corn syrup in the US?)
85g (3oz) butter
125g (5oz) apple puree
30g (2 lumps) stem ginger, roughly chopped
1 egg, beaten

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F, Mk 4). Grease a 20cm (8in) square baking tin and line with baking paper. Sift the flour, baking powder and spices into a bowl. Place the brown sugar, syrup and butter in a pan and heat gently till everything is melted and combined then leave to cool. Add the syrup mixture and all the remaining ingredients to the flour and spices in the bowl and mix together to combine. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 25 - 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, leave to cool for a short time until firm enough to turn out onto a cooling rack.

To ice the cake:
85g (3oz) icing sugar
1 Tbsp stem ginger syrup
1-2 tsp warm water, if required

Sift the icing sugar and add the syrup. Mix together, adding some water if needed to a spreadable consistency. Pour the icing over the still warm cake and spread evenly with a knife. I like a very fine layer of icing on my cake. If you like a thicker icing then double up on the ingredients and make it less runny so it doesn’t all run off the top of the cake.

There is no shortage of apples round here right now. Every time I go out for a walk I bump into someone who asks ‘Would you like some apples?’ (not as sinister as it sounds) to which I always reply ‘Yes, why not’. Another bag full gets added to the already filled basket fulls in my kitchen and now it is pressing to turn them into things.
Apple butter has become a must have for me since I started canning. This cooked down and spiced apple puree is absolutely delicious with Greek yogurt and to have a stock of jars in the pantry ready to go is something I can’t envisage living without now. As well as that, I intend to make pie fillings, bottle juice and fill jars with mincemeat over the next week or two. Some dried apple slices would be good too. If I have time I will write how to make and bottle them as I go along but can’t promise absolutely to fulfill my good intentions.

With all these apples about, I have a yearning for an apple cake. I really want a good reliable recipe that I will remember from year to year, so set about reading lots of recipes in my search for the ultimate apple cake. I want something cakey, that I can eat with my hands but that also crosses over as a pudding. Something nice and moist with a good apple flavour. There seem to be several apple cakes that are for some reason attributed to different English counties; Dorset, Somerset, Devon apple cake etc, as well as Norwegian and Swedish apple cakes. If I could have come up with snappy name to make my own regional apple cake, I would have, but nothing sprang to mind, so this apple cake is non-region-specific.
For my first (disastrous) attempt to make an apple cake I followed a recipe from Farmhouse Fare, a really great book published in 1935, a compilation of recipes from country housewives collected by Farmers Weekly. On paper the recipe sounded just right but I think this particular country housewife had an austere attitude and the cake turned out rather dull, not what I was looking for at all. However, there is nothing like a mistake to give you a clear idea just what you want and what you need to do, so I remade the cake making it moister and more apple-y and I’m really pleased with the result.
I used Bramley apples cooked to a puree in the cake mixture and Adam’s Pearmain apple slices on the top and both varieties have a good strong tang to hold their own when cooked. I added some ground almonds to the mixture too, as they always make a cake lovely and moist. I think this recipe would work with other fruit purees as well. I’ve got some quince puree waiting to be used up so I may try another cake with that and add some chopped stem ginger as well. Feel free to improvise as you see fit.

UNSPECIFIED REGIONAL APPLE CAKE

First make the apple puree:
500g (1lb) bramley or other cooking apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
125ml (1/4 cup) of cider or water
125ml (1/4 cup) maple syrup or sugar to taste

Place the apples in a pan with the cider or water and bring to a simmer, then cook gently for around 20 minutes, until the apples become a fluffy puree when stirred with a spoon. Add the maple syrup or sugar to taste. Leave to cool. This will make slightly more than you will need, so eat the leftovers on porridge, with yogurt or to accompany your Sunday roast.

115g (4 oz) plain flour
pinch salt
2tsp baking powder
100g (3 1/2oz) butter
100g (3 1/2oz) ground almonds
75g (2 1/2 oz) brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
250g (9 oz) apple puree (see above)
2-3 apples for the topping, peeled quartered and cored
1/2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
a knob of butter

Grease a shallow 23cm (9in) diameter cake tin and line the base with baking paper if you think the cake may stick. Preheat the oven to 200C (400F, Mk 6).
Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the almonds and sugar, beaten egg and apple puree. Mix together quickly and pour into the prepared tin, smoothing the top. Chop the apple quarters once more into 1/8ths and place them on top of the mixture, starting from the centre radiating out around the circle, pressing them down lightly. Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle the mixture over the top of the apples then dot with butter. Bake for 30 minutes till the top is browned and the cake feels firm but still moist. Leave till cold, or just warm before serving with cream, or just on its own.

There’s still a way to go, but gradually I am conquering the mountain of fruits that inhabits my kitchen. Apples and grapes are still turning up by, what seems like, the shed load but the foraged fruits are becoming less plentiful and day by day more jars are filled and shelf space becomes more scarce. The pantry is now looking well stocked up for the winter and it makes the arduous jobs carried out along the way, fade to a distant memory. Like when I pitted cherries until three in the morning or spent over three hours shelling enough cob nuts to fill the tweeniest jar. Bramble scarred and nettle stung hands are at last healing after all the hedgerow foraging for rosehips and sloes. Why do they always grow surrounded by a duvet of nettles as well as having their own built in barbed protection for extra measure? There is still lots to do but at the same time it feels as if the big preserving season is starting to wind down.
Everything made more recently has become more than one thing; canning apple juice produced a jelly bag full of apple pulp that in turn became apple butter; grapes juiced to make chilli jam likewise transformed into grape butter. Apple and damsons cooked and pureed earlier for cheese stretched to make an additional 3 pots of curd and the remainder, two sheets of fruit leather. The other day I had a fundamental thought - Note to self, remember to eat all this stuff!

Sloe gin is maturing nicely and will be ready to drink by Christmas. Still with a colander full of sloes and a good amount of wild crab apples to use up it seems the ideal opportunity to rustle up a jelly and with a plentiful supply of vanilla pods, left over stock from my recently closed emporium, I decided to add them into the mix at the same time. I reckoned that to be an adequate combination of ingredients for my jelly until a handful of japonica fruits, eight small rock hard unyielding specimens, caught my eye, so they might as well join the party as well.
Japonica are the fruit of the ornamental garden shrub Chaenomeles Japonica and are similar to a quince. They are best used for making jelly and are sometimes referred to as jelly apples. I underestimated just what an impact these few fruits would have on this jelly. As soon as they started to cook in with the other ingredients, my house was filled with that fabulous perfumed quince scent. I added them as an afterthought but even with so few fruits they brought a lovely character along, in a ‘less is more’ way. I’m sure this jelly will taste fab without japonica as well, please feel encouraged to make things up as you go along with the ingredients you have to hand. All three main ingredients are high in pectin, the stuff that helps jam to set, so are perfect for a jelly. The end result has a beautiful colour flecked through with vanilla seeds and tastes heavenly. The quantities stated below are the amounts I had at my disposal and are given as a guide. My recommendation is to use approximately twice as many crab apples as sloes and calculate the amount of sugar based on the amount of juice this produces.

CRAB APPLE, SLOE AND JAPONICA JELLY WITH VANILLA

Makes approx 2.2Kg (5 lbs)

775g (1 3/4lbs) sloes, rinsed and drained
1275g (2 3/4lbs) crab apples, rinsed, drained and roughly chopped
a handful of japonica, approx 8 fruits (optional), rinsed drained and cut into quarters
sugar
1 vanilla pod

Place the fruits in a large pan. Add enough water to barely cover and heat to a simmer. Cook for approximately 30 minutes, until the fruit is cooked through, mashing the fruit with the back of a wooden spoon and giving it a stir now and again. Remove from the heat and pour into a jelly bag suspended over a bowl to collect the juice. Leave overnight to drip through.
Next day measure the juice and pour it into a jam pan. (Rather than waste the fruit pulp from the jelly bag, you can push it through a sieve or food mill to make a puree then use to make a fruit butter.) For every 600ml (2 1/2cups) juice, add 450g (1lb) sugar. Split the vanilla pod lengthways and scrape out the sticky seeds inside with the sharp point of a knife. Add the pod and the seeds to the pan.
Place clean jam jars and lids in the oven to sterilise for 20 minutes at 100C (225F) or alternatively prepare a water bath and jars if you intend to can your jelly. Stir over a low heat to dissolve the sugar, then turn up the heat and bring to a rolling boil, maintaining until setting point is reached (this took me 20 minutes). To test for this, a blob of syrup on a cold plate will form a skin that wrinkles as you draw your finger across the surface. Remove the vanilla pod then pour into hot jars and seal. Alternatively hot water process for 10 minutes. Refer to previous posts and link for more canning information if you are new to this. Leave till completely cold and set then remember to label.

The crab apple and sloe images are from a set of 50 cards of flowering trees and shrubs produced and given away with Will’s cigarettes in 1924.
Finally, a book recommendation: a recent find and now a favourite, Fruits of the Hedgerow and Unusual Garden Fruits by Charlotte Popescu (published 2005, Cavalier Paperbacks) is a really useful and charming book that I have spent many hours reading through for inspiration and it’s a snip on Amazon.

Month ten Tigress’s can jam canning challenge and for October the ingredient chosen by Kaela at Local Kitchen is chili peppers and all things capsicum. I admit, when the October ingredient was revealed, I wasn’t a gal who could tell a jalepeno from a habanero, but another month, another brilliant opportunity to explore and find out what chillis are all about and to recognise what’s hot and what’s not. As luck will have it, I didn’t have to go very far from home to do my research as growing chillis and peppers seems to be a very popular thing these days, so several friends right on my doorstep have provided the raw materials. With a greenhouse or polytunnel at your disposal, capsicums are a seemingly easy crop to cultivate. You can also grow chillis as potted plants on a windowsill.

As is always the way each month, I read every recipe I could find for inspiration. With its orangy-red transparency flecked through with tiny pieces of red pepper, chilli jam holds a dazzling attraction for me, but as Morgy, next door, had given me a big bowl full of black grapes, from the vine that scrambles over the front of his rustic shed abode, I decided to use them to form the main carrying jelly for my hotter ingredients. If you haven’t got a supply of fresh grapes you could extract the juice from apples instead or I imagine that bought grape juice would work too.
The other main ingredients came for free as well; sweet red peppers plus a purple one from my friend Shelley’s greenhouse, cayenne chilli peppers grown in the Taurus market garden. Cayenne peppers are only moderately hot, you could tell this as some little creature had been eating them in the greenhouse, chewing away at the stem end and leaving the pointy ends intact. I guess this to be a mouse called Miguel, wearing a sombrero and playing maracas. It goes to show that one end of the chilli is hotter than the other and that mice round here are made of stern stuff.

So, after extracting the black juice from the grapes this jam was starting to take a different course from the norm. I remember ‘experiencing’ a sculpture once at Tate Modern by Anish Kapoor. It wasn’t a particularly amazing looking piece, just a box painted black and slightly taller than a person. As you stepped up to a line drawn on the floor and looked within, it suddenly felt as if you were about to fall into a void or abyss and the feeling was so strong and unexpected that it made you recoil and say ‘whoah’ out loud. Anyway, that’s what this chilli jam is like, a sticky homage to that Anish Kapoor work, a jam so black when you peer into its dense glossy richness you have to hang on in case you fall through into an alternative jammy universe.
It’s not so hot it blows your socks off, but you can add more heat if you know that’s what you want. I’ve been eating it on bread with cream cheese and it’s really good. I knew immediately that it would be ideal for adding to meat stock to make a fruity gravy with a chilli kick. This is a strange instinctive feeling to have as a non meat eater of many years standing, so I have given jars away to a couple of carnivore friends to try. I’ve already had a request for 6 more jars

BLACK GRAPE CHILLI JAM

Makes approx 6 250g (1/4 pint) jars

2Kg (4.4 lbs) black grapes, whole with stems removed
350ml (1 1/2 cups) white wine vinegar
juice of 1 lemon (50ml / 1/4 cup)
1 clove of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
300g (0.6 lbs) (approx 5) sweet red peppers, de-seeded and roughly chopped
100g (0.2 lbs) (approx 5) cayenne chilli peppers, de-seeded and roughly chopped
1 tsp salt
1Kg ( 2.2 lbs) sugar
1/4-1/2 tsp of dried chilli flakes

Place the grapes in a pan and heat gently till the juice begins to flow. Once there is plenty of juice surrounding the fruit simmer for 20 minutes, stirring from time to time to make sure it doesn’t catch on the bottom of the pan and squashing the fruit with the back of the spoon. Pour the grapes into a jelly bag suspended over a bowl and collect the juice that drips through, leaving it to drip overnight. The next day measure the juice collected. (You can also put the pulp that remains in the jelly bag through a food mill and use the de-seeded grape flesh you collect to add to another preserve.) I collected 700ml (3 cups) of juice but if your amount is different to this adjust the other ingredients accordingly.

Prepare the water bath, jars and seals ready for canning. For more info about how to hot water process, refer to the guide here. Put the peppers, chillis and garlic clove in a food processor with half of the vinegar and blitz it thoroughly to a smooth sauce consistency. Pour into a preserving pan along with the grape juice, lemon juice, salt, remaining vinegar and chilli flakes. (Another way to adjust the heat would be to include some of the fresh seeds from the chilli peppers instead of using dried flakes.) Bring to a simmer and cook through for 10 minutes then remove from the heat to cool slightly.
Add the sugar and stir over a gentle heat until the sugar is completely dissolved, then up the heat and bring to a rolling boil until it reaches setting point and a small dollop on a cold plate quickly forms a skin when you push your finger over the surface (it took me about 20 minutes). Turn off the heat and leave for 10 minutes, then stir to distribute the chilli peppers evenly through the jam. Pour into hot sterilised jars, seal and process for 10 minutes. Remove from the water bath and leave till completely cold before testing the seals and labelling.
As this is a jam with good acidity and sugar levels, it should keep well without processing so long as you follow the usual guidelines regarding care taken sterilising jars. If you do can it you are making doubly certain that your jam will be preserved safely for a year or even longer.

On many afternoons recently, I’ve taken an hour or so out, to go for a walk foraging for ingredients. Some days this gives me a headache, as foraging can be a very intense activity and the level of ‘looking’ becomes a bit over the top. It is a brilliant way of discovering things though, when you look that hard you see things you would otherwise miss and find things you didn’t know where there. Foraging is not without its dangers however. I am forever getting my hair tangled in trees, ripping my legs through brambles and wacking my head on low branches when intently focused on something just out of arms reach. It is just too tantalising to go away from the path when you think there might be something to be found ‘off piste’. The other day I came across some windfall wild crab apples that required that I crouch down and crawl on all fours under low lying branches to gather them up to take home. Going forward wasn’t such a problem but backing out with my basket full and a camera round my neck wasn’t quite so easy.
A couple of weeks earlier I’d been to harvest wild damsons, from a place in the forest I’d found the year before so I already had plenty of damsons at home waiting for the jam kettle. One by one, as you clock another crop, you are able to add them to your own personal ordinance survey map of fruits and berries.

I love damsons anyway and the idea of mixing them with the crab apples, both wild fruits together, harvested on my doorstep, seemed a perfect pairing. Damsons can be quite a pain to stone and wild damsons being smaller means there’s even more stones to contend with. Making a fruit cheese is the perfect solution, as both fruits can be cooked with very little in the way of preparation and then be forced through a food mill to leave just the fruit puree and dispense with peel and pips, cores and stones. Though it does require considerable patience I like using a food mill, but last year I found a vintage attachment for my Kenwood Chef on eBay that does the same thing, so now I’m all automated.
Membrillo, made from quince, is probably the most popular fruit cheese, served with the cheese board at the end of a meal, but damsons and crab apples have a particularly appealing Englishness about them. Fruit cheeses are cooked down until they are really thick and will set solid as they cool. This means they can be turned out and served in slices as opposed to dolloped from a spoon. They need to be contained in jars or pots with slightly sloping sides that are wider at the top so they turn out easily. There are small glass jam jars around made for this purpose but I’m really lucky that Martin, in the pottery at Taurus Crafts made me some special hand-thrown stoneware jam pots, inspired by some vintage French ones I own. It is advised that in order to make it easy to turn out the cheese, you lightly oil the ‘moulds’ using ground nut oil or some glycerine if you just happen to have some handy.

CRAB APPLE AND WILD DAMSON CHEESE

Rinse and drain the crab apples. Chop them roughly and place in a pan. Add enough water to just cover the fruit, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 20-30 minutes, till cooked through. Remove from the heat, leave to cool then push through a fine seive or food mill over a bowl to remove the skins, cores and pips and leave a smooth puree.
Rinse and drain the damsons, place in a pan and add just enough water to barely cover the fruit. Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes, till cooked through and the fruit has burst. Remove from the heat, leave to cool, then push through a sieve or process with a food mill to remove the skins and stones and leave a smooth damson puree.
I combined 800g (1.75lbs) damson puree with 400g (14oz) apple puree, so two thirds damsons to one third apple, but you can change the ratio to suit yourself and the quantities you have available. To every 600g (1.3lbs) fruit add 450g (1lb) sugar. Place the fruit and sugar in a pan and stir over a low heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Turn up the heat and bring to the boil then simmer, stirring from time to time to be sure it doesn’t catch and burn on the bottom of the pan. Continue to cook until the mixture thickens considerably and when you pull the spoon across the centre it draws a line. This may take and hour or even longer to achieve and it is best to be patient and keep the heat really low under the pan. Pour the mixture into hot sterilised jars that are lightly oiled, cover with greaseproof waxed circles and seal. Leave till set and cold.