Summer produce

Late summer can be a bit of a glut time for fruit and vegetables. In the days before food miles people would have had many ingenious ways of preserving their produce for use in the bleaker winter months. Pickling, drying and dousing everything in salt as the sailors would have done are a few widely used methods of storing food, especially in the days when there were no fridges. Another method of preserving is to add sugar.

The hedgerows are bulging at the seams with blackberries (Rubus fruticosus) at the moment. These are an ideal starter for you to practice the art of jam and jelly making. I personally prefer the jelly, this is just blackberry jam without the seeds, which suits me perfectly as I find after eating the seeds I’m picking them out of my teeth all day. The jelly is great with toast and butter or can be added to natural yogurt for a tasty treat. Here’s a quick recipe which will make about four jars.

Blackberry Jelly

Step 1
Pick about 4lb of blackberries. It won’t matter if some are not completely ripe, but you will find the riper ones come off the stems better.
Step 2
Wash and drain the fruit through a sieve.
Step 3
Get a large preserving pan, (or any large pan) will do and put in the blackberries
Step 4
Here’s where you can choose what to add, either the juice of 2 lemons and 1/2 pint of water or substitute the lemon for tart acidic apples (granny smiths are good, but see what’s growing locally). This provides the pectin for thickening the mix. Simmer for 20 minutes
Step 5
After the mix has cooled a bit, place it in a hessian or cotton bag, you could use cheesecloth or anything else that allows the liquid through but not the pulp. I used the frame from a kitchen chair and supported the bag using a broom handle. Leave this overnight to drip through but keep well away from where household pets can get at it.
Step 6
Towards the end of the juice straining, sterilise some jars by washing in hot soapy water, rinse, then put in an oven at 175F, and leave for 25 minutes.
Step 7
For every 1 pint of juice extracted from the pulp, measure out 1lb of sugar. Add the sugar to the blackberry juice, and heat the juice on low, stirring all the time until the sugar has dissolved.
Step 8
Simmer for half an hour, until the liquid has reached “setting point”. Setting point is when you can put a little bit of the juice on a plate, letting it cool for a minute and then push your finger through the juice. If it doesn’t automatically fall back into itself, and stays at the point you pushed it to, then it’s ready to bottle. IMPORTANT: Make sure you don’t over simmer the juice as you might end up with toffee.
Step 9
Pour your blackberry jelly juice into your hot sterilised jars. . Leave a small gap at the top of the jar for air, this will help the jars create a vacuum after cooling and will last for ages unopened.

Courgette Fritters

Courgettes (also known as zucchini) are flourishing too, especially after all of the rain last week. A lot of people are put off by these vegetables, especially when they are just boiled up. We tend to fry them up sliced with a bit of added garlic, salt and pepper until they are golden brown, but this week i was given a recipe for courgette fritters.
Step 1
Grate the courgettes including the skins, squeeze out the excess juice if you want drier fritters. I used a magimix. Add herbs from the garden, a finely chopped onion and perhaps some peppers. I put in some finely chopped red chilli, this really spices things up.
Step 2
Mix flour and egg together to make a batter and add to the prepared courgette and veg.
Step 4
Heat 1 tbsp oil in a non-stick frying pan, drop in heaped tbsps of batter. Cook, in batches, for 2-3 minutes each side or until golden and cooked through.
The fritters can also be frozen and served when the season has passed.
Storing the crops
Most fruit and vegetables can be stored in some way. Depending on the crop, most root vegetables store very well in the shed, peas and beans can either be frozen or dried, garlic and onions store well if harvested and left to dry on a wire mesh in the greenhouse before stringing up. Fruit such as apples can be stored, especially the later varieties and plums can be made into jam too. With a bit of forward planning there could be less waste and fuller freezers this winter.