Feed: Saints Preserve
99 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 Newer→ Last
-
ilmars Gravis, in reply to
You could try water bath, Put the lids on the jars (with product inside jars of course) put the jars inside very big pot with water up till about 1cm below the lids, boil for about 20 mins, that should make the contents of the jar nice and hot. Take them out, let them cool and hopefully watch the lids seal. I use this for roast peppers marinated in olive oil, works a treat.
-
Hebe, in reply to
Sigh. Our neighbours had an old lemon tree with gnarly big, juicy fruit -- much better than shop lemons. They tried to replant it recently when they terraced their back yard, but the result was very sad indeed.
There's a subject: lemon tree failures. Ours is in the best spot in the garden, catching every last ray and so sheltered that the pineapple sage next to it has flowered for three years without a break. The only decent crop it has had was in 2011 when the sewerage failures meant three males were peeing around it for months.
-
James Green, in reply to
Imma try with a big catfood tin. I’m guessing a sharpish inside edge is helpful. :-)
I'd try to just keep the top ring and replace the rest of the tin with a pouch (or pad out the inside of the tin, so that you don't bruise the fruit. Older rellie in the family had a beaut contraption with a canvas pouch under a bespoke ring with teeth.
-
Lilith __, in reply to
I’d try to just keep the top ring and replace the rest of the tin with a pouch (or pad out the inside of the tin, so that you don’t bruise the fruit. Older rellie in the family had a beaut contraption with a canvas pouch under a bespoke ring with teeth.
That sounds great!
I’ll try some padding inside the tin.
Reckon it’s also important not to catapult the fruit over the neighbourhood once captured! -
Hebe, in reply to
This plastic-bottle-on-pole design looks good: http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/how-to-make-a-fruit-picker-zb0z1211zmar.aspx
-
Hebe, in reply to
Or others here. Some look vicious. http://www.gardenista.com/posts/picking-fruit-the-easy-way
-
Lilith __, in reply to
Some look vicious
Razor blades! Holy crap.
-
Really, really try dehydrating your feijoas, they are worth the effort.
-
Hebe, in reply to
Razor blades! Holy crap.
I have a theory that wealthy people's garden sheds and kitchens are bursting with cruel and unusual gadgets. That comes from me having inherited much of a close relative's kitchen contents and garden kit. There were many specialised gougers, slashers and crunchers (and that was in the kitchen). Even a grapefruit segmenter and skinner. The most wonderful was a lethally beautiful garden hand tool like a narrow-bladed miniature scythe.
I realised then that Midsomer Murders was in fact a documentary. -
Just taking a break from sorting today's olive harvest and came across this conversation. I've tried the lye-curing method in the past; it worked well but the olives lost most of their flavour. The simplest method I've found so far that keeps the most flavour is to wash and prick the olives, then immerse in brine (1/4 cup plain salt to 1 quart of water (apologies for imperial)). Stir once a day for a week. Then drain and put in fresh brine. Do this for 3 - 6 weeks. After 3 weeks taste to see if the bitterness is gone.
Once they taste OK, bottle in fresh brine, or oil, or vinegar, with herbs, chilli, garlic etc. -
My figs take forever to ripen, each one randomly appearing after I've given up hope. Perhaps an adaptation to human cultivation, which increases the likelihood of a bird getting there first?
In contrast, I bottled a full bucketload of guavas yesterday and hope to make pâté/jubes on the weekend. What a pleasant surprise to discover what those scraggly trees half-under the carport were.
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
Once they taste OK, bottle in fresh brine, or oil, or vinegar, with herbs, chilli, garlic etc.
Sterilised bottles but not bottled hot, right?
-
Many, many years ago I had a huge old feijoa tree. A work colleague was a keen wine maker so he came over and grabbed a heap of them. He gifted me a half bottle of the result and I accepted with some trepidation. I eventually tried it one night with some Chinese takeaways and it was delicious. Wished he had given me more.
-
Rosalie, in reply to
If I've attached it properly, here's the anchovy tin prototype
-
Richard Aston, in reply to
The only decent crop it has had was in 2011 when the sewerage failures meant three males were peeing around it for months.
That's how I restored a failing lemon tree , lemon trees it seems just loved to be pissed on. Same for orchids.
-
Bart Janssen, in reply to
The only decent crop it has had was in 2011 when the sewerage failures meant three males were peeing around it for months.
That’s how I restored a failing lemon tree , lemon trees it seems just loved to be pissed on. Same for orchids.
Urea is basically nitrogen fertiliser.
-
Lynley Chapman, in reply to
It is the birds who pollinate feijoas:-) There is also a pesty Bronze beetle that loves eating the new fruit buds on feijoas - they have been utterly rife in Wellington over the last two summers my friendly garden centre man tells me....mutter mumble.
-
Back in the day.....melted paraffin wax was used to seal out the air when making chutneys, sauces and pickles. I've gone back to my 1974 edition of the NZ Woman's Weekly Cookbook by Tui Flower and she says this under the heading "Pickles, Chutneys and Sauces": "Chutney packed in jars should have a layer of paraffin wax poured over before covering with cellophane. This will prevent drying out and shrinkage. Store chutney and sauces in a cool, dry place."
She also mentions using corks to seal sauces and even dipping the cork into the wax to make really sure about sealing.
She is stern about clean and sterilised bottles and jars.
These were the days of bulk preserving when the cupboards needed to be stocked to get through until the next harvest season.
My Mum was a great preserver - "Waste not, want not" was her mantra from being a child of the Great Depression, WW11 and strong Scottish roots. Mum would wash jars etc in hot soapy water and then heat them in an oven at around 90C until the chutney or whatever was ready to bottle. Once the produce was cold she would apply the wax seal and then cover with a cellophane cover, label and date her bounty.
Mum made a mean Crab Apple Jelly which my cheese eating brothers sigh over now she is no longer here to do the interesting process that involved.
Cellophane covers are still cheap and available in supermarkets in the jam making section -a Green, red and white pack is one I am familiar with and they include labels and rubber bands, plus instructions!
Op shops and rubbish tip shops often have stacks of glass jars as cheap as chips. -
Janet Digby, in reply to
Which leaves the feijoas. I don’t really like them all that much, and I’m not sure I want to make a lot of feijoa jam, but the idea of, say, a sweet feijoa chilli sauce is most appealing. Anyone got a recipe?
After all these years of reading your stuff Russell, I had come to believe I knew you, the important stuff anyway. This revelation has come as a nasty shock.
Don't worry, all is not lost. You can try a feijoa crumble. I find goes down well with people who (oddly) aren't that fond of those little fragrant green packages of joy.
Super easy. Scoop the flesh out so they cover the bottom of a casserole dish, and add a crumble on top which is made of wholemeal flour, oats, butter or margarine and brown sugar. Not the soft brown, the one with the bigger crystals as it gives a nice texture. A few minutes in the oven and it goes well with ice cream or custard.
Plus, there is the added bonus that you can freeze the flesh and enjoy your crumble a few months down the track, in the depths of winter when something warm is in order.
-
Lucy Telfar Barnard, in reply to
you can do that?
Yes indeedy. Though I should clarify that you don’t make the gin part, you just make bought gin sloe-y. You pick a whole lot of sloe (blackthorn) berries, prick them all over with a needle or a fork (or if you’re really making heaps, some people make little nail beds that they roll the crop over) or whatever works for you, put them in a big jar with some sugar (quantity to taste, but somewhere between 200 – 300g per litre of gin) and poor gin over them. Put a lid on. Shake every day till the sugar has dissolved, then shake or turn from time to time. After 3 months, decant through muslin into a bottle. If you leave it longer it will end up with a stronger almond flavour, but no more sloe flavour. Then let it age, if you can.
I made one batch as an experiment. We had a particularly bountiful summer in our corner of Bucks, and the sloes hung late on the trees. You need to wait until after frosts have started for the flavour to develop in the fruit. I didn’t end up picking them (I didn’t learn you could) until November, so there were fewer than if I’d learnt earlier, but I suspect the flavour was stronger for it. Certainly the resulting liqour was a lot richer and darker than the sloe gin I’ve seen (rarely) in bottle stores.
The gin is lovely – I particularly recommend it with bubbles at Xmas time.
For additional entertainment, give your children a sloe berry to bite on. If you have more than one child, make sure they bite at the same time. They’ll only bite once, and the look on their faces is priceless. Ah, golden moments in parenting…
-
Alexa Johnston's Roasted Feijoa Chutney is the best I know. She puts them through a mincer, but I find that pulsing in a food processor works well too.
http://www.ladiesaplate.co.nz/recipes/jams-and-preserves/roasted-feijoa-chutney.html
-
Feijoa crumble is pretty good - the feijoas go all pink. I also make a feijoa chutney from the Digby Law cookbook which goes really well with cheese and curry. Not together.
-
Paul Williams, in reply to
Can I come round and harvest some? There’s a reason feijoa rhymes with “freeloader”, after all :-)
Feijoa related products are the first things I buy on every visit back to NZ. They're very rare here, Sydney-siders generally don't know what they are.
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
Alexa Johnston’s Roasted Feijoa Chutney is the best I know.
Oh, I like the look of that!
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
The gin is lovely – I particularly recommend it with bubbles at Xmas time.
There’s a song about sloe gin fizz …
Post your response…
This topic is closed.