Things we love – the recipes

Four Fruit Marmalade

 Well here is a brilliant recipe, particularly if you are short of time for chopping up all the fruit first, which does take time. You make it over two short sessions and leave overnight.

Makes approx 3kg/6lb

2 grapefruit

2 lemons

2 Seville oranges

2 limes

water

sugar

Scrub the fruit and cut into quarters (use any citrus fruit, just keep the quantity about the same) Remove pips and put these in a small bowl and cover with water. Leave overnight to soak. Place all the quartered fruit in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Simmer until tender. Now leave the fruit to cool in the liquid (overnight perhaps)

Next day chop the fruit into chunks, shreds, whatever style you fancy and return to the liquid. Add the strained liquid from the pips. (This has the pectin required for setting) Now, for every pint (600ml) of fruit and liquid add 1lb sugar (500g). Bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Boil hard until setting point is reached. (To test the set, keep a plate in the freezer and drop a little marmalade onto the cold plate to see if it will form a light skin and set)

Pot into warm jars.

Now six interesting facts for you:

1. Always scrub the fruit as you never know what those fruit farmers have sprayed them with

2.Pips hold the pectin for setting the marmalade

3. You can freeze the cooked fruit and pips to use at a later stage

4. Seville orange pith becomes translucent when cooked, sweet oranges remain opaque

5. Peel should disintegrate when cooked, so squeeze it hard to test it

6. For Old English Marmalade replace half the white sugar with brown.

One for luck! Cool the cooked marmalade for 5-10 mins before potting which will help keep the fruit distributed rather than sink to the bottom.

 

Lentil and sweet potato dhal

Fry a chopped onion in oil and butter, add good large spoonful of curry powder, garlic, chopped fresh chili, coriander seeds and stir. Chop a sweet potato into small chunks, add to the mixture with a cupful of red lentils and stir. Add boiling water to cover and season with salt and pepper. Cook for fifteen minutes or until all is soft. Mash gently with a potato masher and serve with rice or bread. Serves two.

Pumpkin Soup

One fresh pumpkin, peeled and cut into even chunks

One onion chopped

Fresh thyme

dash of hot sauce and a splash of cream – if you have them

Salt and pepper , stock or vegetable stock, dash of olive oil, square of butter

Fry the onion in the melted butter and oil for a few minutes, add the pumpkin and saute for five minutes stirring occasionally, add boiling water or stock to cover a good inch over the pumpkin, add the thyme, salt, pepper and seasoning or stock cube and cook until soft. Blend with a hand blender until smooth and add more water if necessary, add a dash of cream and hot sauce to taste.

Greek yoghurt, Polenta, Lemon and Almond Cake

The recipe is below in the comment from Madame Maincourse – this lovely cake was one of the things she made with the Total yoghurt we were given to sample and test, and since then I have only bought that brand because it really is very good.

Danielle’s Barbudan Johnny Cakes

A Caribbean staple and once you have had them you will be making them to go with everything. The name probably derives from ‘journey cakes’ as they are easy to carry and nibble on anytime. They are semi-sweet/savoury and when I’ve made some more I’ll take a picture.

8oz self raising flour

I egg

slash of oil  (that should be splash of oil)

splash (again) of milk

I tsp salt

2 tsp caster sugar

Mix all ingredients together and leave in fridge to chill for at least four hours. Roll into small dumpling sized balls and fry in deep oil until golden brown all over - they will rise so make them smaller rather than larger. Eat with anything.

Crab and Brown Shrimp sandwich

At Wyken I bought a dressed crab and a packet of  brown shrimps from the fishmonger there (Dutch shrimps – Dad noted) and made this. No recipe – just a layer of crab with shrimps on top and salad – cram it all in, although a bit of hot sauce in the crab mayo always makes it taste better. I only ate one of these - the other one was for my son.

 

World Cup Tapas Meatballs (or Burgers anytime)

Small packet of mince – either lamb or beef

1 onion – cut into quarters

2 or 3 slices of bread - stale if possible

bunch of mint & coriander (lamb) parsley (beef) – finely chopped

I fresh chili – finely chopped

I egg

Good shake of salt & pepper

Put bread, onion, herbs and chili into a food processor and pulse until soft crumbs. Add to the mince in a bowl, add egg, salt and pepper and mix well with a fork. Form into balls. Roll in cornmeal and fry until brown all over. This same recipe works for burgers in a toasted bun with loads of salad.

Jam – handy hints

Everything you need to know is on the sugar packet. I tend to use a bit more fruit to sugar because I like conserve type jams, not too solid. Also, I store them in the fridge just in case.

Only two tips -  start it off very slowly, just turning over fruit and sugar until sugar is dissolved. When hot, turn it up enough to allow it to gently boil for required time. Do warm the jars on a tray in the oven because it is very hot stuff to pour in. Different sized jars allow for nice presents as well as large family quantities. The apricot made six, and the raspberries seven, enough for a year for me.

Elderflower Cordial

30 Elderflower heads – pick in full sun, choose open creamy yellow flowers  (it’s the fragrant pollen that counts) shake out the bugs and wash.

6pts of water – heated to boiling then turned off.

2lb caster sugar

1 pk citric acid (from chemists – didn’t have any so left it out)

Juice and zest of 2 lemons (this is what my recipe said but I would add at least 6 more to this if you don’t use citric acid)

Boil and allow the water to cool for half an hour, add sugar and dissolve, add washed elderflowers. Add pared zest and juice of lemons, and then drop in the whole skins, if you had citric acid you would add that now but only use 2 lemons in that case. Stir and prod every now and then, and steep overnight. Strain through a seive lined with a  j cloth (a clean one…) into bottles. Leave room for expansion if you want to freeze it as it freezes well.

This recipe without the citric acid is very sweet, and in the ‘old days’ they wouldn’t have used citric acid anyway, so add as much lemon juice as you like until it tastes how you like it.  Have left out the instructions to sterilise everything that you find in some recipes because I froze mine. This makes four large bottles and should be diluted to drink.