I been really enjoying making jams, marmalade and chutney again recently, putting away small jars for Christmas gifts and to share with my family.
We had lots of small limes this winter but they are so small and so full of pips that they are no good for juicing so I looked for an Indian lime pickle recipe to try. I came across this
beautiful blog and chopped my limes ready for the salt. After three weeks they had released a lot of juice and become quite tender...there is no water added, can you see the level of the juice? There are 20 small limes in here in quarters...
I knew the recipe would be too hot for us so I reduced the chilli to one green one and measured out my spices...
so before I forget what I did....after 17 days of sitting in the salt as shown in a previous post the limes were tender so I assembled the spices etc. I knew the above recipe would be too hot even for me so I used a heaped dessertspoon of red chilli powder, one large green fresh chilli and 3 cloves of garlic, crushed. Subbed in a teaspoon each of cumin seeds, mustard seeds and smoky paprika and 1/2 t turmeric3 tender lime leaves.Fried off the whole seeds, crushed garlic and chilli, then the dry spices with a splash of water to prevent it sticking. Tip in the whole jar of limes and juice and the leaves and stir to coat well. turn off the heat and then bottle once cold. It was almost too hot to taste but I'll try it again after a week or two in the 'fridge.It made about 1 and 1/2 jars as the limes had reduced a lot in size. Look at that gorgeous colour!
Cooking time is very short and the recipe produced just over one Bonne Maman jam jar. I left it to sit in the fridge for 2-3 weeks before trying it...it is very hot but delicious...
My next venture was the Blood Orange and Port recipe from my new book,
Small Batch Preserving. I used sherry instead of port as that's what I had...it also made just over one jar. I didn't cook the first batch for long enough as I was frightened of it burning so all the pieces of peel floated to the top. This jar is much better and suitable to gift. It's a beautiful colour from the two blood oranges, one lemon and 1/2 cup of sherry...
We had lots of lovely lemons from Mum's neighbour, Steve, so I preserved a few jars of them, just quartered and rubbed in salt and left to cure, tip the jars once a day to cover the fruit. Once ready you rinse off the salt and the pulp and chop the rind to add to salads, couscous and anything else you would like a lemony flavour...
In my last post I showed you the huge pawpaw that our neighbour Nong had grown. Well there was more yesterday, over a kilo and as much as we like it fresh I wanted to make another Indian style chutney and found this
lovely recipe from the Australian Women's Weekly magazine. I halved this recipe and just half of one of my habenero chillies(lethal!) and made these 3 jars today...
It's not too hot and has a lovely sweetness to it.
Then I printed a few paper labels to glue on from this
gorgeous blogger.
It's very satisfying to make your own preserves and certainly saves money too especially if you grow your own fruit and I love the bright yellow and orange colours in the pantry.
Last Friday was the 6th birthday of the wonderful Down to Earth Forums. We had a virtual tea party where we set our our best china etc and drank a cuppa while contemplating what a huge impact it has had on the lives of it's members...here is my photo...Nana Gardner's tea set, mugs from the British Museum, knick-knacks from the op-shops, seedling in odd containers and a hand knitted throw rug. Poor old Twitch has had conjunctivitis in one eye so has been having cream in that eye each day, he is a trooper!
So that's all from me for now, happy to say Mum and Dad are home from their holiday...here's Mum...somewhere in the tropics!
Bye bye for now
xx
