Part two: In which our heroine makes a hot sugary liquid and does not burn herself
I’m really good at kitchen accidents and have experienced burns caused by hot sugary liquid. They hurt, a lot.
This is relevant because the next stage of making crab apple jelly was to add sugar to the liquid. I measured what had dripped out of the bag overnight. It was about 4 cups so I added 4 cups of sugar to the liquid and put it in a pot to boil. This is pretty standard jam making procedure, half fruit and half sugar. I dissolved the sugar before bring the liquid to the boil , also something I do when making jam.
The rest is pretty unglamorous. I boiled it until a skin formed on a spoon full, placed in saucer, and left to cool. This took about 15 minutes.
Then I had to do the part which has burning potential. I had to get the hot liquid into hot jars and put hot lids on them. At this stage the jelly was actually quite liquid, it took a bit of faith to believe it would set. I go it all in, no burns and only a little spill.
The result.
I got four jars, plus a little. If we judged food by how it looks this would get 9/10. But we know taste is far more important or we would eat those plastic grapes they have in supermarket deli’s.
It tastes sweet and appley, but slightly tart. I had some on toast this morning and it was a little bland. Maybe it would be better on scones with cream, but then everything tastes better with cream!
I’m not sure if I would try this again, I’ll see how many jars are left this time next year.
As a funny after note I ‘forgot’ to tell my children that the word ‘jelly’ in crab apple jelly did not mean the same thing as jelly out of a packet. They came home from school expecting a dessert. They were a little disappointed.
Filed under Housekeeping, Recepies | Comment (0)Golden Apples
WARNING: These crab apples were harmed in the making of this post.
The previous owner of our property planted a crab apple tree. As far as I can tell crab apples are useful for 3 things:
1) Bird food, birds love them.
2) Apples for dolls tea parties, their size means they look like a perfect small apple for a doll.
3) Crab apple jelly, like jam with out the fruit pulp.
Our crab apple tree has a prolific crop every year. In past years all of this crop has been used for either one or two. This is because to make jelly you need a piece of muslin to strain the juice from the pulp. Despite the fact that I do spend time in fabric shops I never got around to buying a piece of muslin. Until last year. But when I went down to check on the status of the crab apple crop they were all gone. I can only guess that birds were the culprits.
But this year I was prepared. I had my muslin and I was going to beat the birds.
I consulted cook books on the best method to make jelly, but in the end I combined the ideas.
First of all I took the pot down to the tree and filled it up. I then washed and halved the apples. I put in enough water to just cover them. The picture is of them in the pot. I then cooked them until they were totally pulped, which took about an hour.
Then the fun bit began. I had to strain what was in the pot to separate the liquid from the pulp. One thing that all the books I read said was to let this process happen slowly and NOT to squeeze the bag with the pulp.
Now I’m sure you can buy flash gadgets to do this but this is what I rigged up in the kitchen sink
.
I left it over night to drip.
In the next post read how I turn the liquid into something you can spread on toast.
Filed under Housekeeping, Recepies | Comment (1)Chicken Curry
Let’s take a break from books to talk about food.
Before Christmas I needed a meal that I could throw in the slow cooker in the morning and serve on rice when I got home. A curry fitted the bill nicely but I only had one good slow cooker curry recipe. It was for lamb and spinach curry and I didn’t want to cook that.
So I went to this site. The year of crockpoting has finished but the recipes remain. Because this is an American site many of the recipes use ingredients we can’t get here but I used a recipe for Indian Chicken Curry. I had to make a few mods but it was very good.
Here’s how I adapted it to NZ.
- I used 1/2 a can of coconut milk.
- Garbanzo beans are what we call Chickpeas.
- I used 3 Chicken breast, they weighted about 350grms.
- All the spices were the same.
- I used the pre-grated ginger in a jar, 2 Tbsp of it.
- 1/2 tsp chilli from a jar instead of Tabasco).
- Onion, garlic and pepper the same.
- I didn’t use an eggplant because they are expensive at the moment, maybe I’ll try it when eggplants are more plentiful.
- I used a golden kumara instead of sweet potato.
I mixed the spices, onion, and garlic in the bottom of the slow cooker with the coconut milk. I then added the chicken and stirred it through. I placed the pepper and kumara on top, so they would steam. I cooked it for about 8 hours on low. You could go up to 10 hours but the kumara will break up. You could probably cook it on high for 4-6 but I think curries are best cooked on low as they have more time to develop flavour.
Filed under Recepies | Comment (0)Monday is over
I survived the first day! There are some changes thou. First of all the mayor is going to get a cake. It will be easier and look more impressive than the custard kisses I was planning. Second I’m getting the tyres today. It will take 2 hours after my doctors appointment, but it will leave Thursday for relaxing before Friday.
At present this blog is in danger of turning in to food blog. I’m really proud of my strawberry cream pie because I made up the recipe. I don’t do this very often. I’m good at following others recipes. Since it is all mine I can legally share, so here goes.
Base
125grms of wine biscuits (1/2 a packet, use the other half to make those truffles)
50grms butter
2 Tbsp sugar
Crush the biscuits in the food processor. Add the butter and sugar and pulse to combine. Press in to a spring form. A 20cm will give you a deep pie, a 23cm a shallow pie. Bake at 180c for about 7 mins until lightly browned. Be careful the base can burn quickly.
Filling
1 can of strawberry’s (you’ll find these in the can fruit section)
1 strawberry jelly
250g tub cream cheese
1 cup cream, whipped.
Empty the can of strawberry’s in to a pot and heat until boiling. Remove from heat and dissolve the jelly in to the strawberry’s. Cool mixture to room temperature. Place mixture in food processor. Add cream cheese, which should be slightly soft and cut in to small blocks. Mix to combine. This will also puree the strawberry’s. Once cream cheese is mixed through, chill mixture until it is the consistency of whipped cream. Then add the whipped cream, pour over base and set. Top with fresh strawberry’s to serve if you want to. Enjoy!
The progress of my pie was not as smooth as the instructions. I dropped the bowl just before I put it in the fridge to chill. The mess of pink sticky mixture is best left to the imagination. I had mixture in my hair. I almost cried.
I did recover to make the lemon honey, which was incident free. I would post pictures of my recovered pie and the lovely jars of lemon honey but I am cameraless. This is because the Hubster took the camera to his lab to take pictures of his important experiments. So here’s a picture of someone else’s lemon honey.
