Adventures in cookery

[lizwilliams]

(This is one for the cooks and the gardeners. Ignore if you don't give a toss).

Following an attempt last week to produce gooseberry jelly*, I've now done some more with the big, pale golden-green gooseberries that we've got in the garden right now. It seems to be setting but is a bit runny. If I can get some mackerel at the market tomorrow, I'm going to do a gooseberry sauce with it: this is a traditional southern English thing.

I also just picked a cucumber. We have tomatoes like little green bullets, but they're ripening; a lot of raspberries and blackcurrants, a magnificent eggplant which hasn't produced anything yet but is flowering, and beans, peas, chard, potatoes, and lettuces. Zucchini have flowered and there is a little one on the way.

Onions: hmmmm. Jury is out.

* Not that I'd ever admit to failure, but if anyone likes vaguely fruit-flavoured toffee and has a really big hammer, then email me. You get a free glass jar, which you'll be able to work out your tensions on by shattering it.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Hey, gooseberries are technically illegal around here.

(Alternate host for white pine blister rust, so personna non grata in the birthplace of Paul Bunyan.)

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Oh dear! I'd never heard of this.

[lisamantchev.livejournal.com]

I've never used gooseberries for jam (and I _love_ making jam, as attested by my Jam Cupboard) and now I'm curious.

*will have to check out the Farmer's Market this week*

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

This is a very simple recipe, but there's an issue with the timing:

- cover fruit with water and simmer gooseberries until soft
- strain the gooseberries
- add 1lb of sugar to every pint of liquid, heat until sugar dissolves, then boil until it starts to set (this is the tricky bit - you have to do a push test with a spoon on a plate).

Doesn't involve pectin, however, so it's more the English sense of a jelly with a jam, and it's intended as a savoury accompaniment to meat rather than the sort of thing you put on bread. The jam/jelly differences between the US and us have confused me for years!

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

'jelly than a jam', sorry.

[lisamantchev.livejournal.com]

I've never actually made jelly, although I have the little straining contraption (and hear about it from my frugal grandmother every year when I throw away the apple peels from making applesauce... "Apple jelly, Lisa! Apple jelly!")

One of these days, I swear I will try it.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Ah, grandmothers! My mum has always made a lot of jelly - mainly redcurrant. This is the first time I've had a place with fruit bushes, so I'm making the most of it.

I did a gooseberry sauce with some fish last night and it worked really well - it's actually just pureed gooseberries.

[lisamantchev.livejournal.com]

The first year we rented the farmhouse, the pear tree had about ten crates worth of fruit on it... out of necessity, I learned how to can a pear chutney, pears in almond syrup and pear-sauce. Then we bought the practice, and the entire backside of the building is lined with blackberry bushes.

The new house has a baby orchard: two tiny cherry trees, two apple trees, a pear tree and what might be plums or apricots. Check back with me in September and see if I've survived the canning... ;)

[solsticedawn.livejournal.com]

You experiment with food, you'll occasionally fail a batch.

I find that our pet dog is willing to eat almost anything. What's more, my husband rarely complains, because in this house complaining leads to ownership of the job.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

This is sort of beyond complaint, partly because T was the person who advised me to boil it for so long (we couldn't find the jam making notes) and also because we can't extract it from the jar in order to taste it. It might be fabulous! Just has the texture of rock.

I then went back to my mother and got her advice.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey I did this a couple of years ago with apple jelly. Even my mother couldn't work out how to get it out of the jar. Eventually I admitted defeat and threw it away.

I don't have a jam thermometer and I now suspect the push test is one of those "if it passes the test you should have taken it off the heat 5 minutes ago" deals.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

>I don't have a jam thermometer and I now suspect the push test is one of those "if it passes the test you should have taken it off the heat 5 minutes ago" deals.

I strongly suspect you're right.

This jelly is okay, but somewhat runny even though I thought the push test was okay. Hmmm.

Provender

[cleopand.livejournal.com]

Fantastic! I've heard of gooseberry with fish but have never tried it. Status here is tomatoes ripeing, aubergines and chilli peppers flowering, potato and onions starting to fall over (ready to harvest in a few weeks), broad beans come and gone, courgettes (zuccini) pumping out like no-one's business, peas ditto and pumpkins and cucumbers just starting to flower and wander. I LOVE this time of year :-)))