Spring gardening

Last week the seeds went in and onto the windowsill. Two of each thing I am hoping to grow- tomatoes, melons, squash, cucumber.

No signs of growth yet, I think the windowsill may not be warm enough but hopefully they will be ok. Some of the seeds were quite old so that might be the problem.

This weekend it was the turn of outside. Dead plants were removed, raspberries cut back, pots tidied up and plants moved to new locations. It looks much nicer out there now.

One of the mini fruit trees has blossoms and a daffodil and tulip are both in flower at the bottom of the garden, lots of buds and new growth about too. Spring is definitely underway.

Marmalade

I keep making things, taking photos and then never getting around to blogging them. I am going to try and work through the backlog in the next few weeks and then hopefully the excitement of spring will give new things to blog about.

Starting with my most recent experiment, marmalade.

I had never made marmalade before, but figured it would be a good way to get small jars of shreddless marmalade. I used the Everyday marmalade recipe in Jams and Chutneys by Thane Price as a starting point.

The seville oranges were a bargain at ten for £1 on the market. The recipe uses seven, but I added the juice from the extra three anyway as I didn't want to waste them. A lemon and a couple of sweet oranges went in too.

The fruit was boiled whole for about an hour, until the skin is very soft. The boiling water takes on an orangey colour and smell. Some of the fruit popped open, but only juice seemed to have escaped.

The fruit was taken out and allowed to cool, then the insides scooped out and the peel finely sliced. I only sliced the skins of three seville oranges as some of the marmalade was destined to be shreddless.

I took a detour from the recipe here. The shredded peel was kept to the side and all the rest of the fruit chopped up and put in a jam bag. The bag was hung into the pan of water and simmered for a while until there was about 2 1/2 pints of liquid.

The bag of mushy oranges was taken out and the peel and flesh removed. The bag went back in the pan with just the pips in. Internet knowledge tells me they contain most of the pectin so I figured having them in a little longer would help the set.

Sugar went in next, a mixture of caster, a little ja, sugar and some golden brown suger. A radom combination, but that was what I had in the cupboard. The mix was stirred until the sugar had dissolved, then the marmalade was cooked at rolling boil, testing every 5-10 minutes until a set was reached. It took about 40 minutes, much longer than the book suggests.

Once it had reached setting point the heat was turned off and the bubbly scum on the top skimmed off.

About half the marmalade was put into jars, the rest was left to cool for a further 5 minutes, then had the sliced peel stirred in. The cooling stops the peel floating to the top. Then into jars.

It took a few days to summon up the courage to actually taste it. I was worried it would be far too bitter and totally inedible.

I am pleased to report it tastes right. The set is a bit odd though, not very jelly like, more thick and sticky, still goes well on toast.

Sloe vodka

This should have been posted a few weeks ago. We went on a sloe picking mission to get supplies for sloe gin and vodka.

Something odd was going on with the trees, some had loads of sloes, others had absolutely none, not like they had been already picked but literally not a single sloe to be seen.

This meant we got fewer sloes than in previous years, we came home with about 1lb 6oz of sloes.

The sloes were rinsed and several holes pricked in each one using a blackthorn thorn. This is a long process and best done with something interesting to listen to.

The sloes were put into a jar, then sugar and vodka added (1lb 2oz sloes, 9oz sugar and 1l vodka). It has all been left and will be strained just before Christmas with occasional shaking to make sure all the sugar dissolves. We also made a small batch of sloe gin to give as a Christmas present, using 4oz of sloes, 300ml of gin and 2oz sugar.

Pumpkin cookies

As promised I used the pumpkin scrapings in baking, and returned to show you some pictures.

Most recipes online start with pumpkin puree, so I pinged the bowlful in the microwave for a few minutes then poked at it with the hand blender. I ended up with a lot of puree.

I googled recipes, I thought chocolate would be the best option so went for cookies, adding cocoa to the recipe to make them chocolate chocolate chunk cookies. 

Honestly I am not blown away by them. The mix was very runny, it looked more like cake mix and I debated sticking it in cupcake cases but thought it might not cook through. The biscuits have a somewhat rubbery texture. Not inedible, but not "oh my gosh these are amazing".

They also used very little pumpkin puree, so I still have a huge bowl of it. I am not sure if it is worth baking anything else. I may freeze a few batches for adding to curry sauce.

Happy Halloween

I apologise for being a rubbish blogger of late, I keep thinking "I'll put that up" than never getting round to it. I will try to do better.

In the meantime, here's a seasonal photo for you

I am going to try my hand at pumpkin pie with the scoopings, so I will report back soon.

Raspberry vodka

This may seem a little out of season, but it works if you have a lot of later season raspberries, or do like I did and cheat, buy frozen berries from the supermarket.

Last year we tried this with fresh supermarket berries because we left it too late to go to the pick your own, it was nice, but not as fruity as I would have liked and rather expensive. Froxen berries are much cheaper and they seemed riper.

I started this a few weeks back as it will be bottled up for Christmas presents, but there is still time to make it before Christmas.

I got a little overenthusiastic with the quantities of berries and sugar because I like it sweet and fruity, you can, of course, adjust to suit your tastes.

You will need:

2l Vodka

1.5kg Raspberries, fresh or frozen

750g Sugar, most recipes seem to use granulated, but I had caster to hand and can't really see that it matters

Demijohn or large jar with a good closure, significantly larger than your quantity of vodka

A funnel if your demijohn/jar has a smallish opening

Ignore the random stuff that lives at the back of the worktop, that is not involved.

Weigh out the sugar, use the funnel to pour it into the demijohn, do this first when it is all nice and dry means the sugar does not stick to everything.

Add the berries to the demijohn. They are less squishy if you do it when they are frozen, but you get very cold fingers, whether you prefer squishy or cold is up to you, don't get frostbite!

Use the funnel to pour in the vodka. Close the top and give it a good swirl around to mix the sugar in.

Covering it will help to keep the colour. Give it a swirl a couple of times a week to start with, once all the sugar is mixed in you can just let it sit. Obviously keep an eye out for any signs of it going iffy.

After two to three months it can be strained through a jam bag and bottled up. It is meant to improve further with age, so last year's is even better than the fresh stuff, but I have not had any long enough to test that.

Other fruit can be substituted in, blackberries and sloes both use the same process.

Beef Wellington

Tesco sell bags of vacuum packed steaks, and quite often they turn up in the reduced section of the chilled aisles. They are usually a pretty good bargain, who can argue with half price British fillet steak?! As a bonus, the fact they are well sealed in the vacuum pack means you can beat them with a rolling pin for extra tenderness without getting steak juice all over the kitchen.

Since they were bargainous I figured I would try my hand at beef wellington, it was unlikely to be completely inedible, but at least if it was I would not have ruined expensive steak (see how much faith I have in my cooking skills?). It turned out very tasty, so I am sharing it here, it is maybe not the official way, but I pieced it together from ones I have seen on TV, yes I could have looked the recipe up, but never mind.

Ingredients:

Fillet steak, either one bit per person for individual ones or a bit big enough to share

Farmhouse pate, it has mushrooms in there so saves time/faffing

Puff pastry

Egg, beaten in a jug for sealing/egg wash

Anything you would like to serve with your beef wellington, I added new potatoes, peas and sweetcorn

Set the oven warming up to about 200 degrees C.

Put the steak into a hot frying pan pan to seal it on all sides, make it nicely brown then take it off the heat, leave it to sit while you do the next bit.

Roll out the pastry, you want to make a rectangle that is quite a bit more than twice the size of your chunk of steak.

Spread some pate on the pastry sheet, just off centre, covering an area the same size as the steak, then sit your nicely browned steak on top, it will look a bit like this:

Spread beaten egg around the edges of the steak

Fold the other half of the pastry over the top and fold all the edges in, give then a good squeeze to seal them (for some reason this photo has rotated 180 degrees, logically the folds would be at the bottom). Optionally egg wash the top of the parcel if you have a lot of egg leftover.

Put the parcel of tastiness onto a non stick sheet on a baking tray and into the oven until the pastry is a lovely golden brown, it will probably be fifteen to twenty minutes.

Serve up with your choice of tasty sides, enjoy eating.

As you can see I accidentally made HUGE parcels. When the steaks came out of the bag they looked a bit small and feeble so I did one each. This is deceptive as we could have comfortably shared one parcel between two people.