That Thing Our Grannies Did? Oh Right, Preserves (With a Recipe)

I never thought I would see the day when I would take to the bottle.  Now wait a minute, I'm not becoming an alcoholic, oh no.  I'm referring to preserves.  In my earlier youth (as I'm really not past my youth, at least not for the next 60 years), I never thought I would get into preserves.  I always saw it as a time consuming process and it's so much easier to buy those items.

My first bout of "preserving" was when our Bishop's Hat Chilli plant gave a fair amount of chillies last year.  I came across a Chilli Jam recipe, that I wanted to try for an evening of entertainment we had planned for the same day.  What better accompaniment for a cheese platter than chilli jam, and as it is a Nigella recipe I didn't think it could be difficult.  Oh my word, what an epic royal mess.  Right there I decided to hell with preserving.  What threw me was the use of pectin, which was a, rather expensive, and b, caused me to lose 2/3rds of my jam mixture due to the pectin messing around and causing horrible gooey lumps in the jam.



Fast forward about 10 months later and for some reason the preserves bug bit me again.  I decided this time to do something easier.  We had a bunch of lemons from Kelsey & Lab Rat's garden, which I didn't want to spoil.  So I trawled the internet for preserved lemon recipes, and it is so easy to do, it doesn't even deserve a page or a recipe.

Preserved Lemons

Lemons

Salt

Lemon Juice

1.  Top & Tail the lemons (that means cut of the end that look like nipples).

2.  Cut each lemon in quarters lengthwise.

3.  Sprinkle thoroughly with salt.

4.  Pack tightly in a jar and fill with lemon juice.

5.  Stand on the counter for 1 week, turning the bottle upside down in the evenings, and right side up in the mornings.

6.  Refrigerate and begin using after 3 weeks in the fridge.

So there is the quick recipe.  I tell you these are amazing in curries and stews.  Just take a quarter, slice thinly and add to your pot half way through the cooking period.

Now back to the preserving.  First we have to backtrack a few months again.  My gorgeous sister in law, Halli Halli, gave Husband and I a tin of Appelstroop.  She received this tin from a Hollander that was trying to get in her skirts.  Not that I can blame him, even as a gay man I can confirm that Halli Halli is a beautiful woman.

After finishing the tin a few weeks later I wished to get hold of more, but as we are in South Africa, that wasn't a possibility.  Until The Dutch Table came to the rescue again.  (Thank you Nicole, I've been having a field day on your blog.)  As mentioned on Nicole's blog, this recipe doesn't come out as thick as the shop bought variety, but as She Wee, who is of Dutch decent, approved of it and said it tastes like the real thing, I am quite happy with the recipe.  And no, the reason I haven't tasted it yet is as the word that I'm not mentioning from the previous blog only ends on Sunday.

So, we have pickled lemons, and applestroop ticked off the list.  Then Mr Chilli plant decides to give a bumper crop of chillies.  And we're back to trying a batch of chilli jam.  Again.  And we have a bit of a disaster.  Again.

This time around, I had 2 ideas of how to fix my problem with the pectin.  First I will use less of it, and second, I had the idea, as the original recipe said to use jam sugar, to mix the pectin powder into the sugar before doing anything else.  It worked, kind of, but I underestimated the pectin once again.  I used about half the amount suggested, and ended with a jam that doesn't set.  Then I added the enough to bring it to the correct amount, and now I'm sitting with a very firm jelly instead of a jam.  But I will preserve and try again.  Heavens knows I have more than enough chillies to try again.

I will see what the next batch of jam does with a little less pectin and update accordingly when I'm happy with it.

And of course, what prompted this blog today, due to our abundant crop of aubergines, I am attempting to pickle those.  Of course, I cannot release a recipe I am not sure tastes good, so that one will have to wait until I've tasted it next week.