Bottled Fruit: Belgian Pears recipe
I breezed onto the internet just now to see entries for Belgian Pears. I thought that they could be a traditional dessert. Well, in Belgium, they are not. Which is a shame, as anyone, from the Belgians to the Bengalese would love this dessert. Forget any memory of dull bottled fruit. This wonderful concoction just happens to be preserved in a jar. We tend to include this for dinner parties when we’re feeling under pressure. Many jars of this superb non-alcoholic scrumptiousness are patiently sitting in our barn, waiting to be opened and...
read moreSweet Chestnut Jam recipe. Storing sweet chestnuts
I always associate sweet chestnuts with late autumn. And darkness. As a child, there were men on street corners selling chestnuts from glowing braziers, piling them into tiny paper bags. I always wanted my mother to buy them for us. And when she did, I didn’t like them. I’d peel one as we walked along, hoping that I’d suddenly find them delicious. But I never did. The floury texture put me off. I think I probably forced one down as it was the ritual that I liked. Watching the man rake the nuts across the grid, the warmth of...
read morePear and Lemon Jam Recipe
I spent ages trying to find a recipe for pear jam without success. One day moseying in the recipe section of Waitrose, I spotted a copy of the best selling Italian cook book The Silver Spoon. Leafing through the pages I found a recipe for pear jam. It was hard to justify buying yet another cookbook, so I memorised the ingredients. Somewhere between Waitrose and our kitchen I added one more. I made an excellent jam, not too sweet. A lemony taste with tiny explosions of pear. Everyone that tasted it wanted the recipe. It’s our favourite...
read moreGrape Jam Recipe
About fifteen years ago my mother travelled to New York. As an arty, fashion-conscious type, she enjoyed the galleries, the cafés the shops. She returned with marvellous presents but the one thing that has stuck in my mind was her description of grape jam, or “jelly” as it is referred to in America. Last Sunday, Anne Mary and I both decided to make grape jam. This was a first for me. A mutual friend had sent round bulging carrier bags of grapes to both our houses. We conferred on the grape/sugar ratio and discussed the major...
read moreGrape Jelly recipe
When I first came here I planted a spindly grape vine on a trellis at the back of the pond garden. This was part of a master plan to disguise a neighbour’s rusty corrugated iron fence. I was purely interested in the look of the vine. Large leaves through the summer and decorative gnarled stems in the winter. Pottering by the pond last summer, I spotted a tiny bunch of grapes peeking out from under a vine leaf. Closer inspection revealed a mini harvest of grapes, puny but fat and dark. Thrilled with the prospect of making wine with our...
read moreCottage Smallholder Plum Chutney or Damson Chutney
This chutney recipe works well with plums, wild plums or damsons. It does not need months to mature and keeps well I had some spare time today so finally retrieved the stock pot from Danny, swooshed it out with bicarbonate of soda to get rid of the taint of clove chutney (see Tricks and Tips below) and found the plum chutney recipe from Anne Mary’s old cook book. This was going to be the base of our own Cottage Smallholder Chutney. I had collected three pounds of windfall wild plums yesterday and simmered them last night for 20 minutes...
read moreFrancoise’s garden herb jelly recipe
Danny salvaged a discarded bathtub and planted it with parsley and thyme. Three months later, the bath is overflowing with parsley. It stands beside a large water butt so it’s impossible to forget when the weather is hot. Regular watering has definitely paid off and I’m thinking of moving a lot more herbs down to this location. There was one problem: what to do with the glut? When I mentioned this to my friend Anne Mary, she assured me that she had the answer. Within a few hours she rang me, ‘I’ve found this great...
read moreRosehip and Apple Jelly Recipe
Rosehips are ripening and perfect for picking now. Some people wait until after the first frost, when the rosehips will be soft. We start picking from the first week in September. They need to cook for longer but we know that they’re really fresh. They’re high in vitamin C and a great asset for the self sufficient smallholder. As a child, I remember my Mother giving us rosehip syrup (a dessert spoon daily). It was rather good. Nowadays, we make apple and rosehip jelly. The rosehip flavour combines well with the apple. This is a...
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