Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.
As I write this there’s 5 litres of chutney simmering on the stove. I find the name used in one of my books rather apt: Glutney! I’m doing away with 2kg of courgettes, nearly a kg of green tomatoes from my poor blight-stricken plants, and a kg of apples lopped from the tree hanging over our fence (from which we’ve sadly binned many kg of apples that’ve fallen onto the concrete over the last few weeks – just think of all the starving piglets that could be enjoying them.) I only wish I had more jars! If the chutney works out well I’ll put some words together along with the photos I’ve taken and whack it up here when I have the time.
There’s also a full, large, Chasseur of beef, potato, and celeriac stew in the oven. This is part of my “decent lunch” scheme. Trying to make up enough food on the weekend to carry through the week. I have so much less free time these days – welcome to the normal world! Thank goodness for boiled eggs and dried fruit, is all I can say. Not that I’m complaining, being busy is both enjoyable and fulfilling as far as I’m concerned. Right now I’m regretting buying pre-chopped “stewing steak” rather than my usual beef shin. Shin always works out juicy and tender for me, but I usually encounter dryness with “stewing steak” – as I seem to have this time around. Oh well, it’ll taste good all the same, hard to go wrong with celeriac.
Last weekend we went to the Letchworth Beer Festival, a CAMRA event, and drank far, far too much Real Ale. Walking back in the chilly evening was a lesson to us: drink enough beer and you don’t notice it is absolutely freezing. This weekend we went to yet another beer festival, a smaller do at the Plume of Feathers pub over in Ickleford (a 30 minute walk away.) The smaller do was far more satisfying I felt, with 15 beers available rather than 50 there is much less pressure put on by bewildering forests of choice. We also met an interesting older (offspring post-university age) couple who seemed to have an interest in “greener” living, allotments, reduced carbon footprints, and all that malarky. There’s some “Green Drinks” meeting every first Tuesday in Hitchin, sounds interesting. Might go an heckle some Greenies sometime, will write about it if we do. Never know, they might be the sensible sort.
There’s plenty I could say about the iPhone at this stage too, after almost a month with the thing. But it’d include a lot of whinging of the “but my Symbian/IQ phone 5 years ago did this so much better” sort, it isn’t worth bothering. Apple aren’t winning any friends of the non-iBimbo sort by being total fascists about the platform either. Too many shitty apps of the same general type, yet they don’t permit apps that “compete” with their built in shitty-apps. Face it, their calender, email, and contacts apps are all painful to use. And talk about lack of any sort of neat integration between applications! (I’ve already complained about the actual phone functions of the iPhone over on that facebook thingymo.) Sadly the new gPhone looks like a pile of dingo crap… but there will be more to come, I expect (hope) to see a good gPhone surface in the future. Not that I’m at all comfortable with a platform that seems to be geared towards giving Google yet more of my information. Despite all the complaining I’m generally happy with the iPhone and do think that it is the best thing currently available on the market for me. The lack of real progress over the last few years is sad though, the iPhone has broken a popularity barrier but not pushed any technology barriers at all.
Getting back away from the technocrap front, we haven’t had much fungal luck lately. We’re hoping for better results from this season, nothing to beat our little Amethyst Deceiver stash from last year yet though. A nice, but rather small, puffball is about it. We’ve come across a couple of fairy rings, but both times in inconvenient circumstances. We’ll keep at it! The haws, sloes, and hips are starting to look good though. Some rosehip and haw jelly could be on the cards, and possibly (post duty-free) some sloe-gin (or vodka.)
On a similar topic, we’re well into the game season now, so some birdies must appear in the not too distant future. It is well past the “Glorious 12th” (of August) after all. Just today we were overhearing a man talking about the 6 grouse in his freezer – my thought on the topic being “you utter bastard.” I’d be happy to have just a couple. I must endeavour to know someone, who knows someone, … etc. High-street market rates for these things are entirely fixed at the “ho ho, we’ll rip off some stoopid yuppies” level. I’m entirely unhappy about paying £4.50 for a little bunny, even if it is a pretty darn good bunny. When we were in Ricky, and before Hambings closed, we’d get excellent bunnies for 3 quid. I need to know a bunny man I think. Or snare them myself, my earlier attempt to snare a pesky squirrel wasn’t successful enough (I snared it alright, but it snapped my insufficiently strong snare wire.) Squirrels are supposed to be rather good about now in fact, fattened up for the winter.
Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.
As can probably be imagined, I’ve been somewhat busy lately. What, with moving from a work-at-home schedule back into commuters’ clothing. My commuters’ clothing happens to be florescent yellow with helmet and wheels – which, as it turns out, transforms a 1.5 hour commute into a 1.05 hour commute. Significant! Say what you like of “public” (bus) transport, it is as slow as a wet weekend and lacks a certain something. That something being the daily joy of trying not to be run over by a lorry. It’s worth 2×20-minutes of my day though.
I now work for Zeus, and, as my contract essentially states, must serve Zeus faithfully and efficiently. Really, I could be hacking up perl scripts to present cows as a factor of goats and “working for Zeus” would make up for it. That aside, however, this seems a pretty cool group. The sociological difference to Sensory is close to nil, the primary contrast being accents.
On to business. I’ll be back in Oz between October 31st and November 14th, the first week being in Sydney and the second in WA. I dearly miss many people on both sides of my island continent, so that means you should try to keep some appropriate time free … or I’ll be sad! At the Sydney end I’m thinking Sunday (2nd Nov) lunch at James Squire being a minimum requirement. I’m up for just about anything else that week though.
Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.
Work
What a week! First and foremost, it marks the beginning of a new job. I’ve moved on from the company I’ve worked with since leaving University (before leaving actually) to a new employer up in Cambridge. It’s a significant one for me. My last job always felt like a simple extension of University, in a sense this is my first real move into the “real” world… maybe. Leaving was a very tough decision to make, especially after 5 years. But in the end it was working from home for a year on the opposite side of the planet from all my friends-cum-colleagues that did it. Working from home is truly overrated.
My new company seems a most excellent place. It’s up in Cambridge, so I don’t have to subject myself to London. I like London, but don’t want to go there every day – poor Kat 🙁 Now I’m a commuter of course, and the journey is at least an hour each way. I should be able to keep it down to that once I streamline the travel process and get a bike up in Cambridge (a faster way to get around the town than the buses.)
So, first week down and rather good.
Windows
Unfortunately this week is the week the landlord decided to replace all the windows and doors in our place. They did it all in 2 days, impressively speedy – now I’m just waiting to see if they all fall out. That’s 2 doors, 8 windows, and 2 huge front bay-windows. They left the place in a mess too, not happy about that. Not much we can do about it, except tidy up. It is nice having secure windows though, and being able to see out of them is a nice bonus. We’re told the previous double-glazed windows were the first in the street, they were installed 20 years ago. That probably explains why they were all misted up.
Devon
To add to the business of the week we’ve had a trip to Devon planned since far before I decided to move jobs. It’s part of a little ritual of ours. We’re keen attenders of the Watford LUG meetings. When we lived in Rickmansworth this was our closest LUG, it was pretty close to home in fact. Moving to Hitchin puts us a 40 minute drive away – and we don’t own a car. There are closer LUGs now, and maybe in time we’ll attend one or two others, but we want to try and stick with Watford as long as is practical. So, our little ritual is to hire a car on the first Thursday of every month so we can go to the LUG meeting on this night. Then we have the car for the weekend and drop it back on Monday.
So we get a weekend of mobility about once a month. To to cap off the week I drove the 3ish hours to south Somerset (just above Devon) after work on Friday.
This weekend we’re going to Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall’s River Cottage HQ in Dorset for a “festival.” That’ll take up most of today, then we stay in Weymouth for the night and explore the coastline on Sunday before driving back up to Hitchin.
Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.
Jelly
After a BBQ lunch last week I acted on my curiosity regarding the apples overhanging our little back yard (and frequently crashing to Earth to thump, thud, or clang on an item of backyard paraphenalia.) I pulled out my big-long-lopper and plucked off one of the larger specimens. Based on size and shape we’ve been suspecting that they’re Bramleys, a classic, though only 200 year old, cooking apple. I cut my specimen in half and had a nibble. The taste, sharp yet sweet (similar to the good old Grannies back home), and texture (crisp) indicated that our suspicions could be right in this regard – though this certainly isn’t enough to confirm the identification!
Apple Tree
Bramleys are excellent cooking apples, and they’re especially good for making jellies. This train of thought pulled my gaze over to the Elder tree, covered in sprays of glistening fruit. Elder fruit aren’t all that wonderful on their own, though I hear you can make great wine or cordial from them, but they’re an excellent addition to jellies and jams. It seemed that fate had decreed that the future must contain jelly.
Elderberry Tree
Be aware that elder trees contain a toxin and that eating the raw fruit is strongly discouraged! I’ve read that the level of toxin in the berries diminishes as they ripen though, and is already quite low in the variety of Elder most commonly found in the UK. So, after a little research, I did what you should not: tasted a raw Elderberry! Ooo-errr. The flavour, I can report in a still-healthful state, is surprisingly similar to grape! Maybe somewhat more like a dark wine grape like Cabernet Sauvignon, though with less flavour and greater acidity. I’ve done some further research on the subject of Elder toxicity but failed to find any definitive reference on the subject. One variety of Elder is considered poisonous, but it is mainly found in mainland Europe and the berries ripen to red as opposed to the near-black of the common Elders in the UK. Aside from that it seems that all Elders contain the toxin, a plant cyanide, in varying degrees. The roots, wood, and leaves have high amounts of the toxin – but the flowers are OK, and the toxin in the berries reduces as they ripen. Many foraging sites contain advice along the lines of “taste a few berries from each tree so you can choose the one with the tastiest fruit!” I used to eat Elderberries off our tree when I was a kid, I guess it’s a good thing they were never appealing enough to eat by the bucket-load.
Anyway, don’t worry. The toxin is destroyed in the cooking process.
Apples and Elderberries
With Kat catching falling fruit in bags and baskets I went mad with my big-long-loppers. Well, not too mad, as in the end we had just 1.3kg of apples and a pint of berries. But that’s enough for a decent lot of jelly, 5 assorted jars, just under 1.5 litres in total. The elder tree is in our yard, I really hate it as it is a major sun block, it is a small consolation to get something useful from it. The apple tree is actually in the neighbours yard, but is clearly uncared for and I suspect they see the apples as more of a nuisance than a resource!
Along the way further produce from our own gardens was brought into the mix. The “bite” comes from dried chillies that we grew 2 years ago (we have a near endless supply of chillies stashed away from two plants we grew on the balcony.) I added the chilli since we’re almost out of the excellent Apple and Calvados jelly made by the dudes at Fat man Chilli, unfortunately only available at the Rose and Crown farmers’ market back near Rickmansworth. A couple of jars also sport some chopped-leaf floaties harvested from the coriander plants in the garden.
Be prepared
On with the recipe! Ingredients:
Chillies
1.3kg — Bramley apples, windfall apples are fine (even shop-bought ones I suppose!)
1 pint (sorry, forgot to weigh) — elderberries (plucked from 20 sprays)
5 — hot little chillies
450g per 570ml liquid, ~1.3kg — granulated sugar
“to taste” — Grand Marnier
This is pleasingly simple, don’t be fooled by my verbosity. Be aware that it takes quite some time to complete from end-to-end, as the straining of the jelly needs at least a few hours. First thing’s first, you should have these useful kitchen items available:
A “big enough” pot, for the amounts in this recipe a ~5lt 22cm stockpot was perfect.
Muslin, which is available from catering shops, I buy mine from Nisbets. – I’ve read that a plain (non-fluffy!) tea-towel is acceptable.
A flat, fine sieve is very useful for scum-skimming.
A large funnel, otherwise you’ll make a mess!
Jars, smaller sizes are better I believe but it really depends on what you have lying around. You need around 1.5lt worth of jars for the amounts in this recipe. (With lids!)
A thermometer helps, there are simple ones and insanely complicated ones. I use something in-between, but you can get by just fine without one at all – see below.
(Most of these should be visible in the various photos of this jelly-making.)
Feeling fruity
A pint of elderberries
Dump the sprays of elderberries into a bowl of water and swirl them around a bit. Pick over each spray, collecting all the plump and unwrinkled berries in your cooking pot. Avoid any that are still rather green. Also refrain from eating the berries, as mentioned earlier uncooked elderberries contain a toxin that is best avoided. We found that 20 sprays of berries yielded about a pint of berries. It shouldn’t matter much if you have less or more. Remember to grab the good berries that have fallen off in the bowl too (probably at least a large handful!)
Give your apples a wash. Cut them up into, very roughly, 1-inch cubes (core, skin, and all) and cut off and discard any iffy bits. Toss the lot into your pot!
Now add the chillies (roughly chopped) and water to the pot. Just enough water to cover over the apples. The apples will probably be rather floaty, so be careful not to add too much water. Some recipes I’ve read fill with water to only 3 quarters the height of the apples, this should yield a stronger flavoured jelly I suppose.
Put the pot on the stove and bring to a boil then reduce to a low simmer. Simmer like this until the apples have essentially dissolved into mush. I simmered the pot for about an hour, but 30 minutes should be enough. After this time turn off the heat and let the pot sit for a while, 30 minutes say, until it has cooled a bit (for safety and comfort!)
Taking the strain
Straining
Take a square of muslin, a 50cm (20″) square is a good size. From many of the sources I’ve read it is suggested that this should be “sterilised,” though given that the jelly is going to be boiled for at least another 30 minutes after being strained I’m not sure this is useful! Anyway, the best sterilization method I came across is to iron the muslin with an iron on it’s hottest setting. Easy, so may as well do it.
The muslin can now be laid over a suitable bowl, a 4 or 5 litre mixing bowl is good. Pour the simmered fruit sludge into the muslin then lift the muslin by the edges, give it a twist to form a sealed “bag” and tie it off with some string. Now build some sort of contraption that lets you hang the bag over the bowl, preferably in a way that allows the whole lot to be covered over somehow to keep insects out. The photos to the right show how I’ve gone about this, the whole lot was covered over with an old doona cover.
Leave for a while. I leave it overnight as it is convenient, but 3 hours is probably enough (I can’t imagine getting much more than a few more teaspoons of liquid out beyond that.)
Getting sweet
Sugar time!
Once you’re ready for the next step there’s a few things worth doing in preparation. First give your jars and lids a good wash and sterilise them. I’ve read that a run through a dish-washing machine is sufficient for this (for both the jars and lids), possibly just the rinse cycle even since it is nice and hot. We don’t have such a contraption so I use the oven method for the jars. Place the washed jars upside-down on a wire rack in a cold oven, heat the oven up to 150°C (get on with preparing the jelly while it heats) and turn it off once it is there. Let the jars sit in the oven until you’re ready to use them (likewise, if you’ve used a dishwasher leave the jars in it.) We’ll deal with the lids later. The other thing worth doing at this point is getting a saucepan of water simmering on the stove, I keep the metal spoon and sieve used for stirring and scum-skimming in this. All in the name of sterilisation!
Via a measuring jug, pour the strained liquid back into the pot used to simmer the fruit, cleaned by now I hope! Toss out the pulp from the muslin, but it is worth cleaning and re-using the muslin itself (just rinse/soak thoroughly a few times and finally rinse in boiling water from the kettle.) At this point we add the sugar, the traditional formula is 1-pound-per-pint – thus 450g per 570ml. I had 1.67 litres of liquid at this point so used 1.33kg of sugar. You don’t need to be too precise about it really.
Put the pot over a medium flame and bring to a boil. If you desire, this is the point to add in the Grand Marnier, when the liquid is still cool enough to taste stir in a little Grand Marnier at a time until the flavour reaches a point you’re happy with (purely a matter of personal taste, but I recommend being conservative – just a hint.) I also put in a little muslin bag containing 3 chopped dried chillies at this point, because the two I put in originally hadn’t given the liquid enough bite – again this is a matter of taste, you could leave out the “bite” entirely if you wish.
Boiling jelly
As the liquid heats and boils creamy scum will form on the surface. This is where a flat fine-mesh strainer is useful, but you can do your scum-skimming with a spoon too – just try not to catch too much good liquid with it!
Once the liquid is boiling keep it boiling until it has reached “setting point.”
What is “setting point?” It’s the point at which your sugary liquid has actually become a jelly. There are two common methods for determining when you’ve reached this magical point. The first is to use a thermometer, you can get specialist jam/sugar thermometers for this but I use a general -15-to-200°C digital probe thermometer. Relying on just a thermometer your jam has reached “setting point” at about 105°C. The second method is more practical and makes a lot of sense. Before you start making your jelly put a small plate or two (I use saucers) into the fridge. Your jam has reached setting point when a spoonful of it put on the plate and put in the fridge for 2 minutes bunches up when you drag a fingertip through it, your finger should leave a trail behind it. I use both methods, I keep track of the temperature of the boiling liquid until it is at around 103°C, then I test with the plate method every 5 or so minutes until I’m happy with the result.
A jarring experience
My jelly was on the boil for about 35 minutes by the time I was satisfied that it’d set well. The temperature at this point was floating around 104.5°C.
Put a lid on the jelly pot and set it aside for 10 minutes to cool. Meanwhile put a ladle into your saucepan of simmering water and, if you haven’t used the dishwasher, throw in the jar lids too. You can turn this off after 5 minutes, put the ladle into the jelly and the lids bottom-down onto a clean cloth. Use the simmering water to sterilise the end of your funnel too, then pour the water through the funnel for the same reason. Now grab the jars from the oven.
With ladle and funnel fill each jar, leaving as small an airspace at the top as you’d usually expect. Securely screw on the lids and set aside to cool. Done!
Jarred
In conclusion
I’ve read various expectations on what sort of shelf-life you can expect (stored in a cool, dark cupboard) – around 2 years seems common. I’ve never had a jelly survive being eaten for long enough to know from my own experience!
After I’d filled 3 jars I stirred a couple of tablespoons of chopped coriander leaf into the remaining jelly and did two more. Since the coriander is fresh and not in any way sterilised I expect this will reduce the expected lifetime of the jelly! One of these is for opening right away though, and the other probably next.
The whole sterilising thing is a bit haphazard. Most sources I’ve read recommend sterilising the muslin and the jars, but never talk about sterilising anything else! I think it is best to be as thorough as practical.
I can happily report that my jelly set perfectly, it holds form well but isn’t too firm.
