Feeling peachy and full of beans...

Harvests come and go and when you grow the majority of your own fruit and vegetables or forage fruits and nuts, you cannot delay harvesting or processing; if you do you risk losing them to the animals or to nature.

 

In Asturias we have a wild peach called Piesco that produces small fruits which have a strong peachy taste but once ripe, do not last. If the rain comes their skins spoil and the insects and birds can soon devastate the crop. Knowing when to harvest is paramount. The reason we use these wild peaches is because of their wonderful flavour and they are perfect for making jams, chutneys and for dehydrating. A kind neighbour lets us have their crop of piescos that grow on one of their fields as they don't use them and they know how much we love them. 4kg of them were used to make jam and a further 6kg were chopped and frozen for use either for jam or chutney. They freeze well and it is a great way to preserve as much as the crop as possible before they spoil, especially if you don't have the time to use them straight away. We will collect more this week for dehydrating; they make a great snack for when out walking.

The beans have just been harvested and just in time. The recent heavy rains has caused some damage to the outer pod but fortunately this has not spread to the beans inside. We quickly shelled them and have left them to dry for a few days in the sun after which they will be frozen as is for 24 hours, re dried and stored. The freezing part was a tip from a neighbour who tells us that it destroys any lingering bugs or bacteria and therefore they last much longer and in better condition. It works for us.

Elsewhere we are just about to harvest our first tomatoes which is always a treat. We still have lots of basil left so plenty of scope for some Italian inspired tomato based dishes. On the list of things to do this week include: making piccalilli, chopping wood, extending the stone skirt to the garage, beginning to thin out and weed the garden....enough already.

What are you currently harvesting and what jobs are taking up your time during September?

Making jam- Fig and muscovado

As a jam lover, breakfast would not be the same without a serving of some home-made jam on a hot slice of our home-made bread toasted and dressed with either butter or some vegetable oil. For the last few months I have being decreasing my intake of butter and thus I have being dressing my toast with olive oil or rape seed oil. The use of rape seed oil is very controversial here in Spain since the time in the 1980s when rapeseed oil intended for human consumption was adulterated with some mineral oil and sold cheaply as a cooking oil; many people died and many more suffered ill health as a consequence.

As a result, you can never find this nice and delicate tasting oil here in Spain. We obtain ours during one of the several trips Ian makes back to the UK to visit friends and family.

Making this jam is a simple and very rewarding process. Today I want to share with you my method for jam-making. It is a method I have being following for several years and that works very well for us. We usually make about 30 kg of fruit worth of jam some of which we give away to friends and family.

Some cookery books present jam recipes in which you need to add water but I never do this regardless of the water content within the fruit used; the more water the longer you will need to boil the jam for it to set. Other recipes will advice you to use preserving sugar with added pectin, a natural substance that makes the jam set and fruits contain in varying concentrations. I personally no longer use this sugar. Other recipes will advice you to use the juice of a lemon per kg of fruit as a source of pectin but the acidity within the lemon may alter the resulting jam therefore I do not use lemon either.

Another alteration I have made to traditional jam recipes entails a reduction of the amount of sugar used. Instead of using equal quantities of fruit and sugar, I always use 0.5 kg of sugar per kg of fruit; using a lesser proportion will compromise both the setting and preserving of the jam. The use of sugar as a natural food preservative has being practised in home cooking  for a very long time.

FIG JAM

1kg ripe figs
500gr muscovado sugar, this gives a lovely caramelised taste to your jam but you can use any other type of sugar.

Method
Chop the fig and in a large cooking pan cover them with the sugar and leave over night. I always follow this step as it draws the liquid from the fruit. Just before you start boiling the fruit, stir the mixture until the sugar is dissolved.
Bring the mixture to the boil on a high fire and stir constantly so that the sugar does not stick and burn at the bottom of the pan. When you struggle to control the spluttering from the mixture, lower the heat a notch. Remember you are dealing with a very hot substance that will burn you.
Continue  lowering the heat to a level you can control the spluttering by constantly stirring while ensuring you boil the jam at the highest possible temperature.

Once the fruit changes colour and becomes thicker, it is time to test if the jam is done. To test this, you need to have cooled a side plate in the fridge. Pour a spoonful of the jam on the plate, put the plate back in the fridge for a couple of minutes until the jam cools down and run your finger across the blob of jam. The jam will be made when you note a slight ripple forming on its surface.

Sterilize your jam jars in the oven for 15 minutes at 100 Celsius and bottle the jam. A bain marie will ensure your jam will keep for over 12 months without the need to use other preservatives.

Alterations of this recipe include adding mixed spice, cinnamon or vanilla. When adding one of these spices, I tend to use brown sugar with a softer taste than muscovado or white sugar.

Vanilla works particularly well with muscovado sugar but is best used after the jam has matured for several months. I look forward to opening the last jar from last year of jam I made with figs, muscovado and vanilla.
I hope you have a go at jam making and look forward to hearing from you telling me about your own favourite recipes. One of my favourite is fig with brown sugar and vanilla but you need to let it mature for a few months for the delicate tastes to balance out.

Kiwis from Asturias

One thing I never knew before visiting Asturias is that Kiwi fruit grows exceptionally well here, so much so that there are several small scale producers and many small holding or larger garden that have a few vines. Another thing I never reckoned on was the range or varieties there are and how different each one is.

Each year around this time we buy a fair few Kiwis via Nigel from the Hotel Posada del Valle and his contact with a consumer group who source locally grown produce. The ones we buy are from a local organic kiwi producer who grows a lot of different varieties. In fact we've walked many times through the farm as it is on the way to the route of the watermills near Cuevas.

This year we bought 15kg in total but some of them were for our neighbour who likes to make kiwi jam.
At 1.80€ per kilo we were pleased with the quality.

This year's crop are large, sweet and when ripe, extremely juicy. I like to eat mine like a boiled egg, cut the top off and scoop out the bright green and juicy flesh, Luis carefully peels his and eats slice after slice until it's all gone. How do you eat yours?

Making (and eating) Orange Jam...

At this time of year oranges are at their best. Luis has just returned from the second matanza and as always he returned with a car full of goodies including a sack of oranges and a sack of mandarins. They are sourced from Extremadura and shipped to Palencia. The beauty of these oranges is that they are exceptionally sweet, un-waxed and uncoloured unlike most oranges you will find in shops and supermarkets.

Luis is a big jam fan and usually takes the opportunity to make a large batch of orange jam. The recipe and method was given to us from a neighbour in the village who has always made orange jam this way i.e. using the whole fruit, pith included.

The whole fruit is washed and then grated in a food processor. The grated oranges are mixed with half their weight in sugar. Bring the mixture to the boil and simmer for about 40 minutes until reduced and thickened. It is left to cool and then put into sterilised jars. We seal the jars with pure paraffin wax. For the wax to work effectively we fill the jar to the very top and then top up with the melted wax which sets quickly. This excludes all the air and the wax plug is easy to remove. The jam will keep for over one year.

It really is a delicious jam although not gelatinous like other jams. In addition to being spread on toast, we use this jam with plain yoghurt, as an ingredient in cakes and with chocolate desserts. This batch consisted of 4kg of fruit to 2kg of sugar and made 14 jars. It is a sweet jam as opposed to a bitter marmalade type preserve, deliciosa as they say here in Spain.