Tag Archives: Preserving the harvest

Dill Pickles

Posted on April 29, 2013 by | Leave a comment

For the long weekend we had a nice relaxing time down in Pemberton, about four hours south-east of Perth. Upon our return I found quite a few cucumbers a good size for making my first attempt of dill pickles! Thankfully today my order from OzFarmer.com arrived that contained lots of wonderful things I needed to make my pickles, so I got cracking!

I didn’t have a huge amount of cucumbers, probably about 15 small to medium, but I didn’t want to leave them on the vine any longer as the plants themselves seemed to have died off with what looked like a while dusting of mold on the leaves while we were away, and I wanted to get some pickles out of them before they died completely. I’ll have to do some more research on what this might be, there did seem to get a lot of aphids and ants on the cucumber plants while they were growing, which I did try to deal with some organic pest control, but it didn’t seem to do a huge amount of good.

This was the harvest mid clean. Not a huge harvest, but still better than none! I had intended on putting the cucumbers in two 1 litre jars, but upon packing found I had too many for just one, and too little for two, so I decided to use the beautiful smaller blue vintage ball jars I ordered and that has just arrived that day. I also used a Kosher Dill Pickle pre-made spice that also had something to make them extra crunchy, along with some vinegar and water and brought that to the boil. Then in it went and back into the boiling water canner for 15 minutes. All three of my jars got a nice loud pop when sealed, so I was happy.
  
 These were the large 1 litre jars packed but not full enough. How annoying. But these things happen, so we persevere! I did have the chance to use all my new fancy canning equipment seen above, which made canning so much easier!
 These are the three smaller jars packed with pickles shortly before adding the brine. I think I could have packed them a bit tighter as once the brine was in them they all floated to the top of the jars, so you could see how much space was left in the jars, but a lesson well learned I guess, I didn’t want to over pack them.

Finished product! Three little beautiful jars of homemade pickles! I am so going to get some more of these blue vintage inspired ball jars in different sizes as they are so pretty! Will make storing my canning jars more of a work of art rather than just trying to shove my jars somewhere out of the way! Maybe I’ll put in a high rail all along the kitchen and sit them up there until I use them…. We’ll see what Dave thinks of this idea. ;)

The haul from OzFarmer.com, my beautiful blue jars, enough canning salt to last until the apocalypse, pickling spice and the very helpful book of Putting Food By. New bedtime reading methinks!!

By Steering Member Kim Farnell, first posted on her own blog Barbaloot Suits and Garden Boots. We look forward to hearing what they taste like! :)

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February’s preserve and jam workshop

Posted on March 5, 2013 by | Leave a comment

The workshop was great fun and Emma and Kerrin’s house smelt absolutely divine.  We made 20 jars of jam – half plum, other half nectarine and mango, and 20 jars of Emma’s summer pickle.

Master jam stirer

 

If you’d like to make your own jam, here’s how you do it:

Elizabeth’s great-nana’s failsafe jam

Ingredients

  •  Quantity of soft fruit (plums, strawberries, apricots, peaches…)
  •  Equal quantity by mass of sugar.
  •  Juice of a lemon.
  •  Commercial pectin (quantity by weight, one packet of Jam Setta to 1.5kg fruit)

Method

  •  Wash your fruit and cut it into equal-sized pieces, removing any stones, spots or yucky bits.
  •  Weigh your fruit.
  •  Weigh an equal amount of sugar, mix your pectin through this and set it aside.
  • At this point put your jars and lids in the oven at 100 deg to sterilise them.
  •  Put fruit in a large, heavy-bottomed pot on a very low heat.
  •  Let the fruit simmer very slowly until it is cooked.  This step is important, as once you add your sugar the fruit doesn’t cook any further.
  •  Once the fruit is cooked, add your sugar and increase the heat to a rolling boil.
  •  Boil about 10 minutes, then start to test for setting point.
  •  Once your jam has reached setting point, take if off the heat.  Let jam sit for 10 minutes or so, until the fruit no longer rises to the surface.  This will ensure that when you bottle it, the chunks of fruit are evenly distributed through the jar.
  •  Bottle, seal and label.
  •  Stand back and feel pleased with yourself.

Notes

  •  Pectin is the naturally occurring acid in fruit that aids in setting.
  •  Slightly under-ripe fruit is best for jam as it tends to contain more pectin.
  •  I usually guess with the amount of Jam Setta I use, depending on the type of fruit and its degree of ripeness.  It’s forgiving stuff.
  •  This recipe works for just about any soft fruit – the only failure I’ve ever had with it was with custard apple, and that was because it tends to be gritty.
  •  Setting point is the point at which the fruit soup changes its chemical consistency to a gel.
  • To test setting point, put a saucer in the freezer. When the fruit has been boiling for 10 minutes or so, put a smear on the cold saucer, put it back in the freezer to cool down quickly, then run your finger gently through it.   When the jam creases, it’s at setting point. You might need to do this a couple of times.  If you leave it past this you end up with toffee.

Summer Pickle 

If you’d like to try the summer pickle, you can download the recipe here.

Pickle prep

Furious chopping

Successful pickle

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In case you missed it – preserving the harvest

Posted on November 4, 2012 by | 1 Comment

There was rain, there was thunder and lightning and squally wind.  It was a dose of winter at the end of Spring, and it was NOT going to stop the Kitchen Gardeners holding their Preserving the Harvest workshop.

The plan had been to make marmalade, lemon curd, lemon cordial, tomato passata and Moroccan preserved lemons.  Well, four out of five is pretty good.

Tomatoes, ready for processing

We managed to process something like 30kg of tomatoes into passata, flavoured with garlic, thyme and oregano.

We also made up a dozen or so jars of Debra’s microwave lemon curd (recipe at the end) and two batches of marmalade using Elizabeth’s Great-Nana’s guaranteed recipe (recipe also following).  Debra also made just enough lemon cordial for us all to try.

Sadly, we just didn’t get to the Moroccan lemons.  There was a bit of a jar issue and, well, we just ran out of time.  What with having to try two different kinds of marmalade, some experimental kiwifruit jam and the lemon curd on Peter’s turkish bread, you get the picture…

Bev and Kim with great piles of tomatoes

Debra’s microwave lemon curd 

  • 3 large eggs plus 2 egg yolks
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cups caster sugar (adjust for your personal sweetness preference)
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup lemon juice plus finely grated zest (can substitute some  passionfruit pulp and or lime juice within this quantity)
  • 125 g unsalted butter, melted

Whisk all ingredients together in a glass or ceramic bowl.

Microwave @  50% power for 10-12 minutes, stirring well after each minute until the mixture thickens.

Bottle in clean glass jars & store in fridge.  Use within 3 weeks.

*can be cooked on the stove using a double boiler on medium heat, stirring regularly to avoid curdling.  REMEMBER TO STORE IN FRIDGE!

Orange marmalade and tomato passata

Elizabeth’s Great-nana’s guaranteed marmalade

  • 1lb citrus fruit, sliced very finely
  • 2 pints water
  • 3lb granulated sugar

Slice citrus finely and remove pips.

Put fruit and water into your jam pot and simmer until the fruit is soft – this is important as once you put the sugar in, no further cooking occurs.  If you don’t get the fruit really soft first up, your marmalade will be impossible to chew.

Put your jars and lids into a 120deg C oven to sterilise them.  It’s important that your jam goes into hot jars – hot jam into cold jars is likely to end in an explosion.

Once the fruit is soft, add sugar and boil to setting point.  To check setting point, put a dribble of marmalade on a saucer you’ve had in the freezer for 10 minutes.  Marmalade at setting point will crinkle when you push your finger through it.

Leave the marmalade to sit for 10 minutes.  This is also important – slightly cooled marmalade will mean your fruit is evenly distributed in the jar, rather than floating on the top.

Pour into sterilised jars, seal and label.

*1 pint = 600ml, 1 lb = 455g

We are planning on having another preserving workshop in February 2013, but in the meantime – Happy preserving!

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