What Are You Preserving, and How Are You Doing It? (2016–)

[Paul Bacino]

I just found out that I have elderberry's..  thanks to you guys!!

 

Cheers

 

[Wild_Yeast]

I made a new batch of Pickled Radish and Carrots today. One of the homemade items I sell out of my home. They go pretty quick, but it's fairly easy to make it and requires little time to cure. This is 9lbs of daikon radish and 4 lbs of carrots, but after you salt it and get rid of the excess liquid, almost half of the total weight of the veggies go bye bye. 

[Wayne]

@Wild_Yeast

Nice. I'll be putting up batches of that starting in about 3 weeks when my daikon is ready for harvest.

I also like to throw in a few watermelon radishes which bleed out a nice mild red tinge to the pickle.

 

 

[Wild_Yeast]

@Wayne that's a great idea, I'm testing a new product, the spicy version. Maybe I'll try some watermelon radishes with it to make a distinction between the two types. Tae pics of the results, I'd love to see how it looks.

[ElainaA]

I took a break from tomatomania to make some jam:

 

 

The jars in back are tomato chutney. Not the recipe that many here seem to use but one passed around in my family. It is originally from Madhur Jaffrey's An Invitation to Indian Cooking. My copy is in a sister's handwriting. She said hers was written out by one of our brothers.

Edited September 2, 2016 by ElainaA (log)

[ElainaA]

I meant to summarize tomatomania to date: 42 quarts of canned tomatoes, 4 quarts of tomato puree, frozen, 4 quarts of roasted garlic/roasted pepper/tomato sauce, frozen, the tomato chutney shown above and 6 quarts of imitation V8 juice, also in the freezer. And a bushel of tomatoes picked this morning waiting in the garage. And lots more in the greenhouse. Lots more processing to come. (And don't even try to estimate how many tomatoes we have eaten.....) 

[kayb]

Picked up some very green (no red at all) mangoes today. Will try @Wild_Yeast's  mango pickles. Something in me wants to spice the sugar syrup, but I'll go straight by his description/rx for this first go-round.

 

I have a batch of sauerkraut fermenting that'll be ready next weekend. 

[Wild_Yeast]

2 hours ago, kayb said:

Picked up some very green (no red at all) mangoes today. Will try @Wild_Yeast's  mango pickles. Something in me wants to spice the sugar syrup, but I'll go straight by his description/rx for this first go-round.

 

I have a batch of sauerkraut fermenting that'll be ready next weekend. 

The green mangoes are showing up at the markets here too, must be a harvest somewhere recently. Good luck on the pickled mangoes @kayb ! I just tested mine today, it's only day 6, and it's not ready yet, I can tell its gonna be 3-4 more days, because of my house temperature. 

[ChocoMom]

Finally had a bit of time, so I canned 8 pints of blueberries in simple syrup.  Its such a treat to use those during the long winter!   I have enough to can roughly 16 more pints...(Whether I will have the time or not - is the big question.) Argh. 

 

[Wayne]

 

@Wild_Yeast

Here are the daikon and watermelon radish pickles. The recipe is the same as the daikon and carrot pickle recipe from Andrea Nguyen's 'Into the Vietnamese Kitchen'. This is about a 1:1 ratio since I'm thinning the radish plants but is illustrative of how the colour bleeds into pickling liquid.

 

 

 

[Wild_Yeast]

4 hours ago, Wayne said:

 

@Wild_Yeast

Here are the daikon and watermelon radish pickles. The recipe is the same as the daikon and carrot pickle recipe from Andrea Nguyen's 'Into the Vietnamese Kitchen'. This is about a 1:1 ratio since I'm thinning the radish plants but is illustrative of how the colour bleeds into pickling liquid.

 

 

 

 

Nice! I'm sowing my own icicle radishes at the end of summer. So I can add an "organic" line to my products. Does the color stain all the radishes?

[Wayne]

24 minutes ago, Wild_Yeast said:

 

Nice! I'm sowing my own icicle radishes at the end of summer. So I can add an "organic" line to my products. Does the color stain all the radishes?

 

After about 12 hours all the radishes are uniformly stained.

 

[ChocoMom]

Just tested out my new pressure canner!  One jar has chunks of chicken breast,(on the left) and the other is my chicken noodle soup experiment (on the right). The soup tastes great, but I need to use slightly thicker noodles next time. These are just a teensy bit mushy, but not inedible.

 

[Shelby]

56 minutes ago, ChocoMom said:

Just tested out my new pressure canner!  One jar has chunks of chicken breast,(on the left) and the other is my chicken noodle soup experiment (on the right). The soup tastes great, but I need to use slightly thicker noodles next time. These are just a teensy bit mushy, but not inedible.

 

NICE!!!  I'm buying one of those pressure canners soon.  Just haven't pulled the trigger.  Going to try canning some venison.

[kayb]

Kraut! In total, 10 pints and two quarts of kraut, which had been fermenting for five weeks (as I was not able to get to it at the standard four-week mark).

 

Interesting note. This was grocery store cabbage. In comparison to the farmers' market cabbage made into kraut back in the early summer, this did not shrink nearly as much, and did not give off nearly as much liquid. I guess that speaks to how long it had been picked and how far it had been shipped. Still tasted good, though.

 

 

[blue_dolphin]

Yesterday, 8 lbs of tomatoes became 8 half pint jars of tomato chutney:

 

I hope the seals will hold up OK.  I have never processed something so oily and was worried there was some oil on the rims of the jars, even though I wiped them before putting on the lids.

[Shelby]

9 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

Yesterday, 8 lbs of tomatoes became 8 half pint jars of tomato chutney:

 

I hope the seals will hold up OK.  I have never processed something so oily and was worried there was some oil on the rims of the jars, even though I wiped them before putting on the lids.

Beautiful!  I think you'll be fine.  They wouldn't have sealed at all if there was oil or something on there   

[ElainaA]

20 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

I hope the seals will hold up OK.  I have never processed something so oily and was worried there was some oil on the rims of the jars, even though I wiped them before putting on the lids.

As long as they are sealed now you will be fine. I have never had a jar come unsealed once it sealed.

[blue_dolphin]

This is from a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to post then.   I used the last of the Dapple Dandy pluots from the farmers market to make some pluot and ginger jam.  I love the brilliant color of these fruits. 

 

I used both grated, fresh ginger and little cubes of candied ginger in the jam.

On the left is a jar of pluot liqueur that I made using the same fruit and a recipe for plum liqueur from Kevin West's Saving the Season. It calls for a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, 2 cups of gin, a few allspice berries and black peppercorns and some sugar.  Sounds like a hangover waiting to happen !  Its supposed to sit for at least a month but I tried a little the other day and it's pretty smooth already.  I need to find some pretty little bottles for it.  

I wish I had made more of both of these.  The jam is tart and sweet and goes really well with cheeses.  I've already given quite a few jars away.  

[ElainaA]

@blue_dolphin  Both the jam and the liquor look beautiful. I love ginger in jam. Is the liqueur recipe available on line? 

[Tere]

I need to go forage for some damson and make Delia's damson chutney again. 

 

Do you think the famous tomato chutney would work with green tomatoes?

[blue_dolphin]

3 minutes ago, ElainaA said:

@blue_dolphin  Both the jam and the liquor look beautiful. I love ginger in jam. Is the liqueur recipe available on line? 

I wasn't able to find it with a quick search.   I do recommend the book, if you happen to see it.  

Here's the basics of the plum liqueur recipe:

1 lb small dark plums (I used Dapple Dandy pluots, also marketed as Dinosaur Eggs)

1 bottle Chilean Sauvignon Blanc ( I used an inexpensive dry Chilean rosé)

3/4 cup sugar (I used ~ 1/2 cup because those pluots are so sweet)

1/4 teaspoon allspice berries, crushed

a few black peppercorns, crushed

2 cups gin (for the pluots I used, I was very tempted to use tequila and substitute a de arbol chile for the allspice and peppercorns, but I stuck with the gin and it worked very well)

Optional:  the cracked plum pits or 20 blanched apricot kernels.  (I set the plum pits aside, got lazy and threw them away)

 

The recipe calls for halving the plums (I cut them up a bit more, as you can see in the photo) and simmering them in the wine for 5 min, along with the sugar, allspice and peppercorns.  

Add the gin (and cracked pits, if using), cover and set aside for a week.

Double strain (the recipe says to use a colander and fine mesh sieve, I used a colander and nut-milk bag) and bottle.

The recipe says the liqueur will throw sediment so I just put it in larger bottles for now and will strain it again before bottling up small gift bottles.

There's a note that suggests replacing the gin with Irish whiskey and the white wine with something like Cabernet Franc.  I plan to check out today's farmers market to see if there are any late-season plums left or maybe just try the black plums from the grocery store.

[blue_dolphin]

28 minutes ago, Tere said:

Do you think the famous tomato chutney would work with green tomatoes?

I'm certainly not an expert with that recipe.  I think the flavors would work very well with green tomatoes but I wonder if all the spices and long cook time would result in an unpleasant grayish color?
Depending on how tart the tomatoes are I might use less cayenne and give it a taste to see if it wants a little more sugar.

I've been getting some lovely yellow tomatoes from a local farmstand.  They are very sweet and I was thinking I might use some to make a less-hot version but had the same concerns about the pretty yellow tomatoes turning muddy.  Maybe I'll just get enough for a small batch and try it out.

 

 

Edited September 22, 2016 by blue_dolphin (log)

[Tere]

3 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

I'm certainly not an expert with that recipe.  I think the flavors would work very well with green tomatoes but I wonder if all the spices and long cook time would result in an unpleasant grayish color?
Depending on how tart the tomatoes are I might use less cayenne and give it a taste to see if it wants a little more sugar.

I've been getting some lovely yellow tomatoes from a local farmstand.  They are very sweet and I was thinking I might use some to make a less-hot version but had the same concerns about the pretty yellow tomatoes turning muddy.  Maybe I'll just get enough for a small batch and try it out.

 

 

 

Word! I have a very select amount of quite sad green tomatoes this year. I reckon it might be a good cause. I can always have more decent tinned tomato paste / passata on board for sweetness?

[Okanagancook]

I am not so sure that chutney would work with green tomatoes.  I think BD is right about the unpleasant resulting colour.  I personally would not mess with that chutney recipe at all.  Just my two cents worth, er, 1.32 cents worth...given the Canadian/US exchange rate these days.