A Year in Preserving.

I do not own a freezer, there is a small freezing box at the top of the fridge but a pack of frozen peas and bag of oven chips fills that up so its not what you would call storage. I say this not because I feel I need a freezer it's just that the snug kitchen at Corner Cottage does not have the space for a freezer. For the same reason there is no dishwasher or tumble dryer. The reason for my mentioning my lack of white goods is to introduce the theme for a year of writing. This year I will be looking into how we can preserve food without freezing.
There is a certain irony here: The historical methods of preservation have created our luxury items. The methods used in the past to ensure that food would not spoil have created products that are now of greater value than the original product. This added value has come through the process of preservation, in this way necessity has created quality. The price of smoked salmon is, weight for weight, over twice that of fresh salmon.
My friends, who know I'm an avowed foodie, often give me their excess vegetables and fruits if they have a bumper harvest. This act of generosity means I often find myself with carrier bags full of courgettes or apples and, with no freezer, I am forced (without any real malice!) into finding ways of giving these products greater longevity. In food terms it is worth remembering that, historically,  this would have been the difference between thriving through times of fresh food paucity and really struggling for nutrition.
Today is New Year's Day and we are half way through the season of Christmas. As a nation we have indulged in Smoked Salmon, Mince pies, Chutney with Cheese, sausages wrapped in Bacon, Chritmas Cake, Cranberry Sauce, and so many other preserved products. We tend to lose track of the fact that these treats are all preserved from earlier when the seasons provided us with plenty. The idea of a 'feast' was just this: Food saved for a special occasion.
For me, it all started with a gift of Seville oranges that a friend had purchased in error. They became my first marmalade and thus started a decades long obsession with food preservation. I now salt, smoke, jam, pickle, dehydrate and dry foods for eating later.
Our food consumption has become one of the many offspring of globalisation. This is not all bad. The ability to buy bananas all year round is a triumph, as is the availability of many exciting ingredients. However, global food waste is a international disgrace. Our commodification of food and our lack of respect for the resources required to produce food should shake us all. The preserving of food does not have all the answers to these difficult international problems but it is, without doubt, part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
So with my lack of freezer and some fairly rudimentary equipment, this year I shall be reporting on all the preserved foods that are created during their season. Happy New Year!

Day four!

It goes on!
Today was a day to move forward with the courgette mountain. Having used some in a chutney, and some in a Picalilli over the past week it was time for them to take centre stage. I am grateful for the inspirational recipe I found on http://larderlove.com for grilled courgettes in oil.
This recipe is very simple but also quite time consuming, so don't expect to be finished in 5 minutes.
The first thing to do is to turn the courgettes into thin strips, I used a swivel peeler but a mandolins would work too. These are them popped into a bowl with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt.
Then heat up a griddle pan and when it's smoking hot, the strips need to be placed on the griddle and retrieved to another bowl when brown bands of caramelisation or charring appear. It will be surprising how much the volume appears to decrease.
Lemon juice then needs to be added and very finely sliced garlic. This is simply popped into jars and covered with oil. These need to be kept in the fridge as there is no real preservative in the mix. I shall stir some into some long thin pasta and sprinkle with cheese next week.

Cut and ready for the griddle.

Griddles and ready for the jars.

Ready to stir into some pasta.

Day Three!

Earlier this week I saw a bargain and did not hesitate. A whole 5kg box of tomatoes for just £4. So far, they have played a major role in a Chutney, a bit part in a Picalilli and today was the day of their leading role: Tomato Ketchup.
I took 2kg of the tomatoes and chopped them into chunks. I also chopped up 4 smallish onions. I placed these all in my preserving plan with a large splash of red wine vinegar and brought it all to the boil. The pan was then turned down to a gentle simmer for just over an hour.
If you are lucky there will be no power cuts, but if you destiny is to be interrupted for an hour it's not a major issue. It's been that kind of day!
The tomatoes and onions needed t be a bit pulpy. This was then pushed through a sieve in order to remove all the pips and skins.
While this was going on I infused 300ml of red wine vinegar with a big pinch of chipotle flakes some pepper corns, a couple of bay leaves and a few crushed allspice berries. The infusion was done by heating the vinegar to boiling point and adding the bits and bobs then allowing it to cool. (Through the power cut if that works for you)
The pulp was then returned to the heat, the strained vinegar added and 100gms of dark sugar added. This was brought to a gentle boil until reduced by about 50%. The ketchup was then popped into 2 standard jars.

Ready for their labels

Day two!

I am writing this a day late as time got away from me yesterday. So the next preserve was Picalilli. Having done all the cutting on the first day of preserving, the vegetables were salted and left for 24 hours. The mixed veg was then rinsed of the salt and patter dry with kitchen paper. I then blended 60gms of cornflour with 20gms of turmeric, 10gms of ground coriander, 2tsp of mustard seeds and 2tsp of whole cumin seeds. This dry mix I turned into a paste with a splash of pickling vinegar.
I then warmed about 1.2 litres of picking vinegar with 300gms of sugar. When all the sugar was dissolved a little more of this liquid was added to the yellow paste and then all the paste was added to the vinegar. All the veg was mixed into this and folded in to coat everything.
Two last additions of a very finely chopped red chilli and 100gms of honey and the Picalilli was popped into sterilised jars. Ready for labelling.

Getting the last jar out

Jars ready for the cupboard - cold cuts at Christmas

Day one!

Really busy day of vegetable cutting. It began with the preparation of the vegetables for the Picalilli. This pickle is a throwback to the Raj and in that way has a particularly interesting set of ingredients and flavours. I reckon that five or six different vegetables are required to give the level of interest required. This morning I chopped 400gms of runner beans (from a neighbour whilst they are on holiday) 400gms of courgettes, turning to marrows (another gift from a neighbor) 400gms of cauliflower, 400gms of onions, 200gms of butternut squash (found in a car park!) and 200gms of tomatoes from the massive box I purchased in Thame market yesterday for just £4. I then set about cutting everything up and mixing them. To this I added salt and it is, at present, sitting in a cold corner to lose a little liquid and keep everything crisp.

Raw Picalilli

Next I started work on a Tomato and Courgette chutney. With all these preserves there are a plethora of recipes on line. I have taken a 'pick and mix' approach to this recipe. I chopped 400gms of courhete and the same amount of tomatoes. I also chopped 6 small onions and 5 small apples.

To this I added 150gms of raisons and 150gms of dried currants. I disolved 400gms of dark soft sugar Iin 500ml of white wine vinegar. To this I added a stick of cinnamon stick and a finely chopped finger of root ginger. I also threw in a tablespoon of mixed spice. When all was disolved I added the vegetables and brought the whole lot to the boil. This was then simmered for nearly three hours. It wasthen bottled Iin the normal way.

Raw Chtney

Chutney at the start of the cooking process

And so I'm back......

When I started to write this blog I gave myself a few rules. I was going to make every effort to be positive, there was to be a thick vein of ethics throughout the food I blogged about, and I was only going to write when I felt that I had something to say.
This academic year was a bit manic and so, finding the time to blog has been tricky and I have a 'wodge' of sheets of paper with ideas, concepts, mind maps about food and foodie issues. I am aware that I have said this before but I really must find time to write. The things I have yet to write about include food education, rhubarb gin, preservation methods, smoking ones own salmon and preserving for gluts. So I am not short of inspiration!
As I type a large part of Corner Cottage is full of vegetables mainly given to me by other residents of the village. There are courgettes that have turned to marrows, cauliflowers, and runner beans so there is to be a two day frenzy of chutney and piccalilli!
I'll post more tomorrow! (I promise).
This will be a kind of trial run. In the new year I plan to tell the story of a year in preserving writing two blogs a month seasonally examining how we can preserve good things when they are plentiful.

Marmalade for the year

When Mary Queen of Scots, whilst crossing the Channel and North Sea to claim the throne, fell ill, her lady in waiting, a very practical woman by all accounts, boiled up a soup of bitter oranges and sugar to help the young Queen recover. When asked why she had done it she replied by saying, "parce que Marie est malade." So a name for a new product was born - Marmalade! This is, of curse complete twaddle and not the truth at all. However it is a great tale and should be told to all children in order that they see the effect of history on our food culture and also see the importance of learning a foreign language.
The real etymology of the word comes from the Portuguese word for quince "Marmelo"  which was made into a paste "Marmelada". This was often imported to England along with Port, Madeira and other wines. It was sometimes flavoured with other things such as citrus peel and the Marmalde as we know it was born, or rather, developed.
This weekend I made a 3 kilo batch of my basic recipe marmalade. There is a very small window of time in the calendar to make this staple of the breakfast table. Seville oranges are only available for the first 6 weeks of the year so enough should be made for both the whole year and presents as well.
Making one's own jams and preserves often works out to be more expensive than buying the major brands in the super market. However, one's own product is nearly always much better than that purchasable in the shops. If one can get hold of fruit for free then both the cost and quality are to the advantage of the maker.
In the film, Gosford Park, Dame Maggie Smith's character, Constance, the Countess of Trentham, is appalled by the fact that she is served "shop bought" marmalade on her breakfast tray. For once I am on the side of Nobility in this.
I think that one of reasons for home made marmalade being so much more appealing than shop bought lies in the level of sweetness. A wiser man than I once told me that marmalade should feel like a cold shower to the taste buds first thing in the morning. A ratio of 1:2 (Fruit to sugar) should be the absolute maximum for a real marmalade.
Below is my basic recipe for marmalede it has never failed me. In order to make the recipe yours simply change the type of sugar, maybe add whisky or brandy - the world is your orange (Seville, of course)

Seville Orange marmalade.

1 Kg of Seville Oranges (unwaxed of course)
1 lemon (unwaxed of course)
2.5 Ltr water
2 Kg of granulated sugar

Place a sieve over a preserving pan and, having cut all the fruit in half, squeeze all the juice trough the sieve into the pan. Make sure you keep all the pips. Scrape all the inner pith out of the skins of the fruit and add it with the pips to a square of muslin and tie it all up. Slice up the outer skins as thin as you like and add them to the juice.

About a third of the cutting done

Now add the water and the muslin bag to the pan and boil for 1 and a half hours.

First boil

Remove the muslin bag from the boil and, when it has cooled squeeze it gently into the boil. There will be a lot of pectin here but don't wring it out as it will create cloudiness in the marmalade. 

Now add the sugar and boil the liquid until setting point has been reached (this can be tested using the wrinkle test, where a drop of the liquid is placed on a very cold plate, if it wrinkles when pushed with a finger, then nit is ready.

Ready for their labels

Pot in sterilised jars and  label.