5g of viola petals (10g before separating from green stems)
1 cup boiling water
1 cup sugar
Put petals in bowl. Cover with boiling water. Leave to steep for several hours or overnight. Strain liquid. Place bowl of liquid over saucepan of boiling water. Add sugar. Stir until dissolved. Bottle.
Makes 1.5 cups (Approx 370ml).
Last one for today, I think.
180ml jar.
Maldon sea salt – enough to almost fill jar.
Zest of two lemons. Peeled with a zester
Put salt and lemon zest onto tray lined with greaseproof paper.
Rub the zest into the salt with your fingertips, lightly. Just enough to release the oils and mix well.
Put into oven at about 75 degrees C.
Check after 15 minutes to see if the zest has dehydrated. Mine took about 30 minutes.
Rub through salt and zest with your fingers to break up any lumps. Try to keep the flakes of salt reasonably intact.
Pour into sterilised jar.
Use on grilled vegetables.
500 ml vodka.
3 lemons into 8ths.
1L jar.
Dark place, keep turning every few days.
Might become limoncello.
These are just like the salt preserved lemons, but in a smaller jar.
Apparently they discolour round the edges when you preserve them in salt.
I don’t even know if this is the right way to preserve limes.
I seem to remember that Nigella Lawson freezes them first to help them break down in the salt and juice, but her book is like, 100 miles away and I couldn’t find the recipe online.
Oh well. 😉
So, lemons were on offer at Tesco.
This is a large 1L jar.
I stuck two tablespoons of salt in the bottom of the jar.
Then I cut up a load of lemons into quarters – take the little nasty end bits off where they were connected to the tree.
Toss them in salt.
Stick them into the jar. Add more salt between each layer.
Press them down. Add more lemons and salt.
Add some peppercorns. Usually I add a bay leaf too, but I didn’t have any.
Top up to the height of the lemons with lemon juice from a bottle or other lemons.
Put somewhere cool. Turn over a couple of times every few days to make sure the salt and juice makes its way around all the lemon bits.
In a month, there will be preserved lemons.
You use them by cutting away the flesh and then rinsing under cold water.
Omnomnomnomnom.
To me, having a vegetable garden and eating fresh produce is only part of the equation. The real joy comes in the winter when you can head down to the cellar, pick up a bottle or jar, and then cook something wonderful that tastes fresh – as if you picked it that day.
I love preserving as much as I love growing things, so it’s only natural that two weeks ago I bulk ordered a load of jars and bottles so that I can save a good portion of the harvest for the winter. I’ve got plans for herb syrups, herb teas, herb alcohols, tomato pasta sauce, herb jellies, gherkins and all manner of frozen vegetables and herbs.
A few weeks ago I started by cutting back the mint plant and hanging it up to dry. It was an experiment really – was it better to freeze mint or dry it for tea? When I freeze herbs I stick them in an ice cube tray and then I can just pop one into the filter of my tea pot and pour hot water over it. These dried herbs I did by hanging them upside down in mesh bags in our exercise room upstairs.
It worked! The mint is beautiful – and you can keep the leaves as whole as possible. Not like those horrid tea bags (even the expensive ones) that just have dusty old bits of mint plant that have probably been in storage for a few years.
And then yesterday I noticed that the mint plant had started to get a bit enthusiastic again, so it cut it all down and made the Mint Syrup from Preserves: River Cottage Handbook No.2
For future reference I’m leaving these pictures here. This is the mint plant before and after I’d harvested just about enough to make one 500ml bottle of syrup:
So yesterday marked the first time we ate something from the garden that we’d grown ourselves. We harvested a few early Basil leaves from the windowsill that had grown from seed and proceeded to eat them with tomato and mozzarella in the most incredible olive bread from Waitrose. This stuff had whole fucking kalamata olives in it. And wasn’t that expensive either.
And then today I harvested a whole 45g of garden mint which has been hung up to dry. You traditionally gather them all by the stem with some twine or a rubber band and hang them with the leaves hanging downwards in order to dry, however I thought I’d try something different. A while ago, in an order to use less plastic, I picked up these these mesh bags
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I’m not into growing stuff to save money, but it’s certainly a curiosity. And along with the wiki, I figured I’d also spreadsheet out all our costs compared to how much we harvest.
I don’t expect there will be that much saving with the actual raw produce. For example above I harvested 45g of mint off my plant, which isn’t very much. To buy 70g of mint from Tesco it costs 70. So this is basically £1.04’s worth of Tesco mint. And then you consider the fact that all I did was replant an almost dead mint plant that I bought from Morrisons about a year ago and actually that’s pretty good. It’s essentially free.
This stuff is getting dried to go into a jar in the kitchen for mint tea during the winter. My favourite organic mint tea from Pukka costs £1.89 for twenty tea bags, which works out to £6.30 per 100g, including the tea bags. Now I reckon that this harvest would easily make twenty tea bags once dried, so processing adds even more value to the stuff growing in the garden.
The best thing about it? Still got this much of my mint plant left. All I did was thin it out. Thinning it out is good -more light and air can get to the younger growth and it’ll grow back even more vigourously.
Yesterday I also planted a few trays of seeds.
I don’t like radishes that much. But you can grow them as a catch crop inbetween other rows – they’re ready to eat in 4-6 weeks. So we’ll eat some, but the rest I’m going to attempt to preserve. You can’t freeze them because they’re too watery and they’d turn to mush, but apparently you can pickle them.
How beautiful do these ones look?
