So the other day for Australia day we had some good old mince meat pies, with home made sauce. Which made me think. I hadn't put up the little photo story of where it came from! So, lets return to a time when people weren't freezing to death, the fruit and veg were fresh and you could open a window without losing an appendage to frost bite.
A time of pumpkins, sunflowers and spring onions.
My brand spanking new preserving jars (now I feel like my parents!)
5kg's of fresh sweet tomatoes soaking in their tub aka the sink
Some friends that will be joining the tomatoes in their "sauna"
I decided not to skin the tomatoes first as the weather was so hot we didn't want to cook the house. So I started chopping, not Chopin.
Don't forget to cut up a kilo of sweet white onions also called sugar onions.
Wack them into the biggest pot you have.
Along with measures of brown sugar, sea salt, all spice, and cloves
Distributed ever so elegantly.
After getting to the boil and then simmering for what seemed days we get a nice thicker sauce
Which gets even thicker after you work through the lumps and remove the skins, as you can see this is old school style
Then you end up with some great bottles of sauce. I made some in varying strengths of Chilli hence the number of chillies on the bottles
So there you have it. How did it taste? Well bloody marvellous, in fact the spicier the better but I hoarded all that for myself only to use it all in a matter of weeks. It was seriously that good. Also the fact that I, like many Australians, love tomato based sauces with just about anything from eggs to ham, to beef, to pork to cheese. Nothing like a cheese and sauce sandwich! So much for being a refined "foodie".
2. An older, influential member of a family, tribe, or community.
3. One of the governing officers of a church, often having pastoral or teaching functions.
4. Mormon Church A member of the higher order of priesthood.
Well not today. Today Elder is for me, a tree. Throughout my time in the three Australian states I lived in, my time in New Zealand and Guatemala, I had never really given any thought to the elder tree. Nor to the things it can produce for the person who cares. When I moved to the UK I learned more, that said I still didn't know much about it. I saw more on the fantastic TV show River Cottage, where they would make wine and champagne from it. Yet, I had not really any knowledge of it, I never made anything due to probably always feeling like a temporary resident and not wanting to buy all the "kit". Since moving to what I call the capital of the East EU, as anyone who reads this over time will know, I have started a brewing, pickling, jamifying lifestyle. I am LOVING it. I recommend anyone who has spare time, some space, and the inkling to get involved in things to make it yourself. It means life is just great because you are creating what you eat or drink and know what goes into it. Also, it just tastes better.
So, as you can see from the above, this is all about the Elder tree. It is the genus Sambucus, already sounds like something I drank too much of in my early 20's, the Italian spirit, sambuca. Therefore, it must be drunk! The Elder is also called Elderberry as the flowers each turn to a berry later in the year. Which will allow me the chance to again make something different from this lovely tree. I have been scouting around, to find some after deciding to make elder sparkling wine (or champagne, for those not worried about annoying the French). I even had others, namely the Welsh DJ, helping me search for blooms. I had seen one a few weeks ago, but it was only small, and was worried there were none about. Then BOOM! There was an explosion of flowers all over our suburb Ursynow. I think because lately we have been having fantastic weather. I don't just mean sunshine, it has really been superb. The only problem with this weather is that the flowers open and then die off a little. So, after a big thunderstorm on Wednesday night, I worried, and luckily my Thursdays are pretty quiet workwise. After meeting a friend for coffee, I came home to hit the net and get all the gossip on Elderflowers. Some say only pick at the hottest part of the day, others say the morning, many suggest the creamier in colour the better. Now I know all this, I need flowers!
Thing is, I never want to be stopped by grannies and into any form of interaction because of:
a) for fear of the language barrier
b) for fear they will call the dreaded city police, or
c) because they may want in on my action.
I had noticed a beautiful tree near one of my student's house, it is on a main road though, so lots of people would see me. I needed to work fast. I rode my trusty Amsterdam bike down there and attacked it with a Swiss army knife. After a quick haul of 20 or so flower heads, I bolted as people were stopping to watch. I thought I would take the scenic route home as I had seen a few other trees in parks on recent roads.
The first patch, the Amsterdam is hiding in the long grass
Don't they just look lovely.
Then I came across the holy grail of flowers, a small road that was empty with no houses on it, full of the flowers, lots of creamy coloured flowers, and lots and lots of pollen and flavour!
WOW MAMA!
No need to hide the Amsterdam here.
I went nuts, as did my sinuses from the onslaught but I wasn't going to let boogers and tears stop me. The flowers smell really lovely and sweet, especially on a very sunny day, even through boogers and tears.
Such pretty little things
Who knew flowers helped romance, also shows something that confuses me, a pretty and well dressed Polish girl and the Polish boy has longer hair and wears brown....
Then off home to start the making of something, hopefully, magical.
The end of about 30 minutes work, including riding time, photography time and hiding from granny maneuvers
Cottage industry, how great you would be..... if only the neighbours would move out and we could convert you all into gardens!
“One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-German Playwright, Poet, Novelist & Dramatist, 1749-1832.
So it is that time of year, yes the greatest time when the fruit is plentiful and tasty but the most important factor is that it is cheap. The Strawbs will be coming to an end soon, whilst at the moment the most common sight in our neighbourhood on the street corners isn't kebab stalls, isn't flower sellers but little men with piles of Truskawka in little cane baskets. One of the quaint things about Poland is that they call a local market a "bazaar". It always makes me think of Turkey and piles of spices, insence burning and little men running around with tea!
But our market is a beautiful place where you can buy some big granny undies, double yolk eggs, dried herbs from a sweet talking old man, fresh herbs, smoked smallgoods, milk, pretty much anything with the exception of live animals, unless you count the gold fish man.....
So this day we bought a whole bunch of beautiful strawberries. They are really great at this time of the year. Not just great but going for about 4PLN/kg ($AUD1.4, GBP0.83, $US1.21). Which is a great bargain for freshly picked and bursting with flavour fruit. So we grabbed about 2 kg's and brought them home with the expectation of munching away on them for the weekend. But when we opened our selection, we realised quickly that they were mostly really good fruit, with few exceptions. This got me to thinking about making jam as I had heard that the best fruit should be used for jam. So off I trotted onto the internet to locate some information. I stumbled across numerous sites with great information. The BBC website even had a video of how to make strawberry jam. Also I came across a great website from Australia, a little bit preachy at times, but a really nice place full of passion and desire to make living at home real living and of course a place where they made their own way of making jam. Me being a scientist, male and know-it-all decided to follow both recipes, otherwise known as having a recipe but not following it.
So here are the steps:
1) Buy fantastic strawberries
2) Core them and remove anything that looks even a little squishy.
3) add equal part of castor sugar to equal part of strawberry and mix, then leave to sit for a while. In my eagerness it was only about 1.5 hours but should be better overnight.
4) The strawberries will now release their delightful juices and so whack all this into a big pot (I mean big!), if you can a heavy bottom is best. Heat on low to melt sugar, once that graininess has gone when you stir it then you can turn the heat up.
5) The reason I said big pot is that it starts what is called a rolling boil, very pretty and very effective, but mine decided to roll over the side. So keep an eye on it, and turn it back a touch if it gets too excited.
6) While it was boiling away, I decided to use some of our home grown mint, berry icecream, and the "scum" or bubbles that are on the top of the jam for a little snack.Product placement anyone? I tell you what, this was the best tasting dessert I have had in a long time, and was so beautifully contructed by a company called "The Hand of Mart".
7) Once it had boiled for a whole half of a football game (Australia 0- Germany 4!) I decided to bottle it, but first I was sneaky and crushed some of the strawbs with a potato masher as I had some really big ones in there that I hadn't cut. I washed, added boiling water, rinsed it, put in the oven for 40 minutes at 140C to kill off bugs. Then filled the jars. The jam itself came out a little runny, I probably should have boiled it longer or as the Mother of Mart, Ela, said I should have used pectin jam. Either way it seriously is one of the greatest jams I have eaten. I am not normally a big jam fan, but I have found myself eating it almost every day for breakfast for a week!
Ok, while I was being the jam king Marty was working hard on another recipe. A more traditional one. One called Ogorki Malosolne, which translates roughly as slightly salted pickles or gherkins if you are English.
Don't they just look good swimming in the sink.
What is that guy looking so happy for?
Oh! I see, he is getting excited about getting into the action!
So after cleaning up those little cucumbers, you should get your earthen ware pot ready. Start by lining it with horseradish leaves, dill, pepper corns, horsradish (root) and garlic.
This was our first time with this recipe, and we decided to slice our garlic. Which was a little silly as the pickles/gherkins became super garlicky. So in future they will stay whole instead.
Then you add your buffed and shined cucumbers in layers with following with alternate layers of the afforementioned greenery.
Keep doing this till the pot is filled, or you have run out of produce!
Then mix salt into warm water and stir till it dissolves, roughly two 2 tblspns to 2L (subtle hint: this is where they get their name from). Then you pour this into the pot and put a weight in there to hold down everything to stop it floating. We used just a small bowl full of the salty water. It worked a treat. We left them for 24 hours and started to munch. For this style of gherkin/pickle they should stay crunchy as it makes them much nicer.
Overall it was a really great fun weekend as we bottled the nettle beer too, which is now sitting away in the pantry and working on getting some great flavour and bubbles... I hope! :)
