'Tis the Season to be Jammy

It's the end of the summer, so we have a lot of left over produce in the garden that needs to be preserved for the coming months.

We had a great year for figs, apples and tomatoes and also had a lot of excess radishes, zucchinis and cucumbers that needed to be used up. 

Our first day of preserving went a lot better than expected, with a batch of zucchini chutney and "fancy fig fumble" whipped up in a day.

First of all, we needed to collect our produce, and my favourite thing to collect was figs, being only the second time I had ever seen ripe figs on the tree, I was very excited. The first time we went out, we collected two baskets overflowing with them. We decided fig jam would be a great way to use them all up before they went off. In our first batch, we peeled and quartered the figs, and added a few cooking apples for some natural pectin, as well as some jam sugar, and simmered them for an hour or so, until the consistency was jam like and put into sterilised jars. 

 

Having never jarred anything, we sought advice from our fellow volunteers and found a good method in washing the jars in hot water, microwaving the jars for 30 seconds, placing the jam inside and turning them upside down and tapping the bottom, as Max had seen his grandfather do, of them seemed to be a good method, and all of our jars sealed very well. 

We didn't really get to see if it was sterilised enough to last over a period of time, as the jam was so popular, we are currently consuming the last jar. The same day, we started on chutney, made from tomatoes and zucchini from the garden, with a few apples again for the pectin. Also quite a success. We followed much the same process as for the jam, but added some vinegar, salt pepper and herbs. 

A few days later, we found a neglected patch of vegetables, that consisted mainly of red radishes, that were quite overgrown and definitely in need of being picked. As radishes are not really any of our favourite snack, I decided to experiment with radish relish. For that I cleaned and diced the radishes, added some onion and garlic and apple, again for the pectin, and vinegar, salt and sugar. Cooked it all up for about 40 minutes and jarred it. This one has not proved to be the favourite of the group, but still quite delicious, and it is a nice colour, so that's a good point... 

We found we had too many apples to be used up entirely by being put into chutney and jam, so also made some apple sauce. For that, I simply peeled, cored and diced the apples, added some sugar, quite a bit in this case as the apples are quite tart, and some cinnamon. I cooked it all up, until is was mushy and delicious and jarred it, making sure not to forget the tapping of the bottom of the jars, which by now had become quite a ritual of the group with everyone getting involved. We also made some apple juice from them, we simply juiced the apples, heated the juice up to 80 degrees and put into sterilised bottles.

With the cucumbers, we found they were a bit too sour to eat in salads and the like, and we had far to many to use them all for this anyway, so we decided to make some pickles. To pickle them, all I did, was sterilize the jars, sliced the cucumbers, some in rounds, some in sticks, placed into the jars and covered with various pickling spices, mixing them up for each jar. I tried some with cardamom pods and star anise, as we had quite a few of these in the cupboard, and they worked quite well. After that, I just topped the jars with vinegar and put them in the fridge. Some I diluted the vinegar for, but this was more because of a lack of vinegar at hand, and some I left straight, and all jars were delicious and quite a hit. We even made cheeseburgers one day with our own pickles, which was quite exciting.

As our poly tunnel is basically full of tomatoes, we realised we needed to get on with more relishes, and made a really good one from just tomatoes, onions, garlic, herbs from the garden, vinegar and salt and pepper. We basically just cooked it for a couple of hours until it was thick and the colour was darker. It took a bit longer than we had hoped, but the end result was so good it was worth it. We also made some pasta sauce style tomatoes by simply cutting them all up, adding onion and garlic and cooking. Once cooked we just put them in freezer bags and froze, ready for an easy addition to meals. Quite a useful addition around here as there are always a lot of mouths to feed and frankly, there are only so many things you can eat relish and chutney on.

After a few weeks of preserving fun, our fig tree was full of ripe figs again, so out we went to collect some more, with the intention of making more fig jam, as the first batch went down so well. We spent the morning picking and slicing the figs, deciding to experiment with leaving the skin on this time and cooked them up, much in the same fashion as the last time, once it was almost complete, we went to add some cinnamon to the jam to make it delicious, and after putting a couple of large spoonfuls in, realised the smell was a bit off... we checked the jar and it was definitely cinnamon, but after closer inspection, realised someone had topped up the cinnamon jar with curry powder! Thinking quickly, we decided to add some vinegar, salt and pepper and tried to make it into some chutney. It was quite a disappointing end to a whole day of hard work in the anticipation of jam, but the chutney is still nothing to be sneezed at. 

After almost a month of collecting, preserving, and of course consuming, the garden is becoming barren and we are preparing to turn it all over ready for some winter crops. It has been a fun and very educational experience and we now have some delicious produce to keep us going a little while at least. Now to plan the garden ready for preserving for next year...