montjoye

Allium free tomato ketchup take 2. Identical to the first try but with double the spices and no celery (because I didn't have any). The first one was good enough for me to eat it all in about 6mths.
Website of inspiration: allrecipes.com/recipe/homemade-ketchup/

1 jar tomato passata (~700ml)
2/3 cup vinegar (I used cider vinegar from Weaver)
slosh water
generous half cup of brown sugar
3/4t salt
1/2t mustard powder
1/2t freshly ground black pepper
2 clove
2 allspice berry


Passata to saucepan. Rinse with vinegar. Rinse again with small amount water. All into saucepan.
Add all other ingredients
bring gently to boil. Stir lots or it will spit.
Simmer further until the consistency looks like tomato sauce.
Remove whole spices
Bottle in sterilised vessel.

Based on my favourite Apricot Rhubarb chutney but twisted towards orange, inspired by recipes on the net (by Delia and Antony Worrall Thompson)



Apricot Orange Chutney:

2 kg apricots, stones removed, halved
zest  and chopped flesh of one orange
1/2c sultanas
500ml (2 cups) cider vinegar
1 c (210g) light muscavado sugar
1 tablespoon ginger, finely grated (well out of a jar)
1 teaspoon salt
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
½ t cloves (lifted out towards the end of cooking)
1/4 t nutmeg, freshly grated
1t tumeric
1 teaspoon coriander seed}
2 t mustard seeds}
½ t cardamom seeds}- dry fried, then partially ground in the mortar
plus the cassia sticks from the sauce below

Heat slowly until sugar dissolved, then boil gently until thickened. Remove cloves and cassia towards end of cooking. Bottle.



This year's apricot sauce:
2 kg apricots, stones removed, halved
1kg white sugar
finely grated rind and juice of a lemon
2 cassia sticks

Heat slowly until sugar dissolved.
Ignore with lid on while finishing some other stuff for maybe half to an hour. This allows the cassia to infuse. Remove cassia, blitz apricots, replace cassia, simmer for 10min, remove cassia, bottle.

I got sick of cleaning things, so I've broken that up with setting up my next brew. This is that 20L of apple and pear juice that I scored for $1/L. It's 37.5% pear juice 'cause I cleared the shelves of the 50:50 mix and had to buy some plain apple to make up 20L. It's Berri brand clear juice.

The yeast is Vintner's Harvest SN9 which several people on Lochac brewers recommended as good for cider, leaving a fuller mouthfeel. So I'm doing a very simple ferment to test it.  vintnersharvest.com/products/vintners-harvest-wine-yeast-sn9. My brew stash doesn't have any simple cider left so this is needed anyway. I do still have a few last bottles of strong home pressed "harvest" cider, about half a case of apricot cider and quite a lot of the very dry mulberry cider. The latter I'm thinking of as primarily cooking booze.

OG 1.043
April 12th, no gloop, 1.004, some spritzig
April 21st, still no gloop, spritzig faded, 1.005, 5.0% abv, bottled.


June 8th
Reporting in on how this went. I call it a success. Nice soft mouthfeel, definitely less dry than with champagne yeast. Fairly light flavour, but it is only cheap commercial juice. I under dosed the carbonation sugar so it's low fizz. Must remember that my ciders don't have the same late ferment issue that many of my beers suffer.

These biscotti are a new experiment.  I wanted something both more authentic and gluten free to do with the egg yolks leftover from the macaroons below. I've made an HA recipe for "bisket" a few times before, which is nice, but is too brittle to transport successfully. www.godecookery.com/engrec/engrec47.html

(Ooo, or there is this one that I just found  www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/bisket-cakes.htm)

The biscotti recipe I used is a "traditional" italian one*, and not far distant from the medjeeval one, but less fatty, no cream or butter and with the sugar in the mix rather than used as a dredge.  www.cooks.com/recipe/o23qs8us/italian-biscotti.html

My changes:
used GF flour
leave out the vanilla
used 4 yolks and 3 whole eggs
divide the mix in two (actually I made it up as two separate mixes)

One half add:
1/2t aniseed, crushed and mixed with the dry ingredients
1/2 cup unblanched almonds, coarsely chopped and toasted in the oven

Other half :
half this sugar was light muscavado.
finely grated rind of one orange mixed into the egg
~80g pistachios
(I don't have any historical basis for the orange and pistachio. I wanted some alternate flavour for those who don't like aniseed and R had already planned a sweet with rose water)

I think I left them in the oven a bit too long in the drying stage. They are still tasty though, just a bit more toasty than is perhaps ideal.


Gotta say, GF flour sure is different than wheat flour to work with! First time I've used it.


The macaroons below are the same as I did last year montjoye.dreamwidth.org/422789.html.

Another piece of lovely linen has been made into a thing. I think I bought this piece from tangent woman? It was too small for most things I could think of, but was enough for an apron. I deemed the fabric so nice that it deserved a fancy hem. I've been working on it as my medjeeval project when I didn't have a more urgent one since festival before last. In the last little while I decided that 2 years was quite long enough to work on an apron though, so I decided to get it finished for this festival. Done.

This was an opshop find that I pounced on to replace my old favourite gardening jumper*. Same colour, a little larger, far fewer moth holes, but with a stiff scratchy zip. I cut the zip out, stitched up the resulting two layer edge and put two buttons with loops as the new closure. I'm so pleased with the transformation. From a harsh, cold, modern look to a soft, warm, old fashioned one. Much more appealing to me anyway.

The end result:


reconstructed "before shot with the zip just placed in position.


*a lovely soft Burberry one found in a charity shop in Edinburgh, dahlink.

I've taken in the new shirt pattern in a few places and converted it to include a yoke. Also shortened it and put a shirt tail curve on the hem. It's moving back towards a classic shirt. There are enough changes that I should cut a new pattern, and I still need to raise the armhole a bit, and I suppose convert the cuff to a standard one. Yes I had a shirt pattern but it is too close fitting than what I want for comfort. So I went too large and now it's being brought back in. Iterative pattern development again. I suppose I want a shirt that fits well but isn't tight and has no darts. I may end up with back darts anyway for my sway back, otherwise the overall effect is visually larger than it needs to be. Oh, this collar is just an old fashioned deep rectangle. I rather like this sort, though they don't work well with a close fitting jacket collar. The "cuff" is just a hem with a fastening of a pair of buttonholes and a button.

I keep going on about lovely quality linen. This is another example. Quite a loose weave but feels stronger than one would expect. Extreme "linen wibble" in the hand, possibly very long staple? This is one of the pieces I got at Christopher George back in November. Buttons are blue dyed (I presume) shell, from Eliza's I think. Corded buttonholes again. When I do these, I should perhaps sew the buttons on with a thread shank?

So ~$15 in materials? plus a day or two work.



( more pics )

The second of the four sock UFOs is now a pair. This is leftovers of two colourways of schoppel wolle crazy zauberball, knitted in alternating rows. I so enjoy knitting this wool! The black contrast is BWM sock yarn. I knitted almost all the first sock during the recent CF/NZ trip. The other was finished but minutes ago.

In the last few years, I've pickled pears for festival. I nearly bought some pears when I found them cheaply, but then remembered there were still peaches on the tree, so I've pickled them instead! This is 1.8kg peaches done in a sweet/sour pickle, by Pam the Jam's recipe from the River Cottage preserving book.  They might look messy to serve, but if the pears are anything to go by, they should taste nice served with cream and macaroons.

We've proven in previous years that the left over vinegar syrup makes great cordial, and I thought I may as well put the pulp/nectar strained from the syrup, into a jar too. I suppose that might work as a light chutney type thing?




OMG these were tasty! So many flavours. Not to everyone's taste as a sweet, though doushkasmum and I loved them. R suggested serving them with roast pork, which I think is a grand idea.

I had said that Luciano the peach tree didn't give me any useful fruit. This year is different. I was alerted to the presence of fruit by a few found sitting on the ground a couple of days ago. Rummaging under the leaves, I found quite a crop. I picked all the ripe ones which came to about a kilo and am in the process of making chutney from it. I guess there is another 2-3 kilos? on the tree still ripening.

It would seem these are white peaches. No the tree wasn't labelled well when I bought it. Even ripe, the skins are green, but the insides are white with a pink centre and a lovely scent.


I've used this recipe (link below) with a few changes:
-in place of the onion, I sauted a similar volume of celery, plus added two handfuls of sultanas to the mix
-there was about 800-900g peach flesh instead of the 700g in the recipe
-4 chillis instead of 6, and mine were deseeded (old ones from the freezer)
-ginger was a heaped dessert spoon from the jar in the fridge

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3158677/peach-and-chilli-chutney


Here are all the ingredients in the pot. I love this stage, ready to go and before it goes all brown and gloopy.




And four little jars of chutney, nice and thick. Smelled wonderful while cooking.