Just Peachy. Tuesday 24th March 2015

Last weekend I was finally able to start my harvest of a laden peach tree in my orchard. I have been watching eagerly for several weeks, waiting for them to colour up and soften. I noticed that. Birds or possums were starting to have a nibble on some of them so that was my cue to start the harvest.

First up, out came the preserving unit and by the end of the weekend I had bottled a dozen big jars.

Then I stewed some peach slices and puréed them. This lot was turned into peach leather and a little experiment as dehydrated cooked peach slices.

I also tried some dehydrated raw peach slices which took much longer than the cooked ones and didn't have nearly as much flavour. In the end my taste tester Max and I decided the leather was a better end product.

With more purée, I made a peach ice cream. It lacked a bit of flavour so I added some passionfruit pulp and vanilla essence. This was a custard based ice cream and in hindsight, I think a yoghurt base would have given it a better flavour. There are plenty more peaches on the tree so that can be next weekends experiment.

Then on Sunday, I stoned and chopped about three kilos and made a big batch of peach jam.

There are still plenty more to harvest so I think I will bottle some more last weekend, stew some for the freezer, and of course eat some fresh ones. 

A busy morning in the Patch Kitchen. Sunday February 15, 2015.

Just thinking I would finish off pipping all the Damson plums that were left in the bucket, somehow I got sidetracked. I have ended up with fresh bread, plum and cinnamon muffins, a slow cooking Chilli con carne, preserved Damson plums, zucchini pickles and a Sparkling Plum drink brewing. And that is to add to the Plum leather I made yesterday. 

I haven't made Sparkling plum today but am following the basic principles of making sparkling drinks like Elderflower. 875g of pipped plums, 750g of sugar ( less than the recipe for Sparkling rhubarb which I tried once before and found a bit sweet) 18 cups of water, 1 chopped lemon and 200ml of cider vinegar. Mix the lot together and let sit for 2 days before straining into PET bottles. Leave for at least two weeks for the drink to ferment and create bubbles. Let's hope it tastes as good as the elderflower as we are down to the last of the big batch I made for summer.

No room left on the bench so it is time to quit!

Tantalising Tzatziki. February 7 2015

Two posts in one day to make amends for only one in January.

I have just been making some Tzatziki dip to have a lunch time and thought I would share. Grated cucumber fresh from the garden mixed with crushed garlic, homemade yoghurt, olive oil and fresh dill are all mixed together with a bit of salt and pepper. How easy is that? And how yummy does it look?

Plums plums plums. Oh, and more plums! February 7th 2015

I haven't done very well with my New Year's resolution for writing this blog more frequently have I? Oh well, life gets just too busy sometimes. 

The fruit crops are bountiful this season so just keeping up with them has taken up a lot of time. Last weekend I made some Plum cordial from the lovely Angelica plum which for the first time had a decent crop. I also made a Plum cinnamon ice cream which tasted like a frozen version of my plum cake was gobbled up in a few days.

           

The Damson plum is absolutely laden but not quite ripe yet so soon it will be full speed making of jam, cordial, Worcestershire sauce plum leather and whatever else I can think of! They are not so nice for eating fresh but are very flavoursome when cooked.The Satsuma plum didn't fruit very well as in 2013 we lost its Santa Rosa cross pollinator so now have to wait until the new one bears enough blossom.

Reblochon update and a New Year's resolution. January 1 2015

I am starting off the new year with an attempt to write blog posts more often even if they are short ones. I often take photos of things I am doing ,thinking that i will write a blog about them later and then it doesnt happen! 

Today marked the end of 4 weeks alternate day brine washing of my Reblochon. As my recipe says, the cheese is now quite orange, slightly moist and beginning to soften. Is it the " desired ripeness"? Who knows? But i decided to wrap one in cheese paper and put it in the fridge. The other two, I will let ripen a bit more. They definitely have that stinky cheese smell. At Christmas we actually had a French woman here from the French Alps area, not far from the valley where Reblochon originates. She gave me the thumbs up that it certainly looked and smelt like Reblochon however not yet ripe enough. We might just be brave enough to try it in a couple of weeks time!

Venturing into the unknown world of washed rind cheeses and how to have Elderflowers all year round. December 10th 2014

It's been a while since I experimented with a new cheese variety but with my cheeseaholic daughter coming home from the UK to visit this summer, I thought I would be brave and try something new -a washed brine cheese in the style of the French Haute Savoie Alps cheese Reblochon.

The initial process was fairly straight forward, adding culture, rennet, cutting curds, slightly heating, draining and light pressing. Adding a culture called Brevibacterium linens is the distinguishing difference  to begin with. 

Once it is in the cheesecave,every alternate day the cheese gets flipped and washed with a light brine solution. This I have to do for 2 to 6 weeks. Meanwhile the cheese will develop a yellow orange colour and the inside will get soft and pasty and very stinky I think.

I just hope I know when it is ready and that it hasn't gone off! So far so good.

I have also done a bit more foraging for more elderflowers in parks and along a disused railway line. I had the (I hope) brilliant idea that I could preserve any excess flowers in the freezer by vacuum packing them.I hope this prevents any discolouration so that they can be used later in the year to make the super easy Sparkling Elderflower of my last post.

Foraging for flowers, Monday, November 24 2014

The elderflowers have been in flower for the past few weeks so I have been out gathering. My source of flowers involves scrambling along a railway line and hoping there are no snakes in the long grass near the trees. This year on my first foraging jaunt about a month ago, I gathered not only some flowers to make sparkling elder and elder syrup but some cuttings to propagate as well. My cuttings are now little plants in pots so now I need to decide  where to plant them so one day in the future I will have my own trees from which to gather the flowers.

It is so easy to make the sparkling elder, I think I might gather a few more flowers tomorrow to make just one more batch for summer.  I might try some experimenting with other flavour sparkling fruit drinks this summer if I have fruit in excess. I have read that red rose petals can also be used which might be worth trying.

The sparkling drink can be stored in the freezer in PET bottles and still retain its fizz but rather than freezing the elder syrup in order to preserve it, this year I have put some in Fowlers preserving jars. It should last for months if not years this way and a useful idea if you are running out of room in the freezer.