Tales of a busy dehydrator: Experimenting with rehydrating food
“Can I eat any of this food when it’s fresh or does it all have to be dehydrated?” Danny examined the bulging carrier bags carefully. I’ve been discovering the delights of buying fruit and vegetables on offer to dry for use later in the year. This will have an enormous impact on our food bills and will guarantee that we have the best seasonal foods available all year. We’ve also been dehydrating a lot of our own tomatoes, summer squashes, apples and pears. So for the first year ever there’s no waste. It makes fast work of drying...
read moreBuy new rubber seals for old Kilner jars from Adams traditional ironmongers.
Years ago there used to be two ironmongers shops in Newmarket. I used to love browsing in them. Then one closed and the last one struggled on and finally closed last year. These were the sort of shops where you could find everything that you needed from dustbins with chimneys for burning garden waste safely to heatproof rope to mend the wood burning stove. Now we go to Homebase to buy exorbitantly overpriced packs of nails and screws. We often can’t find exactly what we want as the stock is designed to appeal to the majority of shoppers...
read moreJoke pasta
Having bought a very smart pasta machine, I made my first pasta last night. It was a dismal flop. Instead of soft delicious ravioli I made nasty miniature chewy hot water bottles. The filling was tasty though. I tried making it using a 400g well of flour “00” on the worktop. I broke four large eggs into the centre of the well and began to combine the eggs with the flour. Easy peasy until the eggs started to break through the wall of the well and cascade towards the edge. I managed to save some of the egg mixture whilst Inca and The...
read moreLife changing devices: the simple preserving funnel
I always thought that preserving funnels were the sort of dinky faddy things that Little Grey Rabbit might have had hanging in her kitchen. For years I’ve found that filling jars with hot jam, marmalade or chutney has been a messy business. My mum advised putting the jars on newspaper before filling – which is a good trick as you throw away the paper and the mess in seconds. But you still have to deal with the sticky jars. Lingering in Newmarket this week I spotted a preserving funnel on sale in a kitchen shop. At half price, it was...
read moreTales of a busy dehydrator: Celery
Well the Westfalia Food Dehydrator finally arrived from Germany. It took two weeks rather than the ten days stipulated on the website but it is the cheapest dehydrator on the market and I’m thrilled with it. OK it’s a very basic model with no temperature control. It’s marketed as being perfect for the beginner. More advanced dehydrator folk run machines built like tanks and called Excalibur. I hadn’t even considered home dehydrating until I read about them on various American websites. Dehydrate2Store.com has loads of web videos...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: Easy passata recipe
“Now you are going to see a piece of kitchen equipment that hasn’t been used for twelve years.” Danny was goggle eyed as I moved the Wellington boots to access the kitchen cupboard. I’d remembered that years ago Seraphina had given me a food mill for pureeing apples. It was right at the back – a bit dusty but complete with a range of three grinding disks. After a few minutes I worked out how to assemble the beast and clipped it onto a saucepan. I glanced at the handle – this was an Italian model reassuringly named...
read morePeeling apples in heaven
I’ve been trying to use up all the apples from our trees in the garden. Bottling with blueberries and blackberries, making apple chutney and apple sauce. I’m going to make apple butter and dry slices when the dehydrator eventually arrives. I hadn’t realised that peeling, coring and slicing apples could be such a chore and take so long. I began to make excuses to avoid dealing with the windfalls. “The chickens will love these apples and also the Min Pins.” The flock and Min Pins chomped and chomped. But the bounty was so...
read moreFruit steamers are a brilliant addition to any busy kitchen
For years I longed for a Vigo fruit press to process our apples, pears and fruit for wine, juices and cordials. They are beautiful objects but too expensive to justify occasional use. Then one lucky day last year, Ronald Hayles left a comment about the wonders of the Mahu Liisa. I had never heard of this type of extraction steamer before but they clearly would be very useful for processing juices. Basically these special steamers extract fruit juice using steam, this also pasteurises the juice which can be drawn off into sterilised bottles and...
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