Cooking Beetroot – Two Methods

Roasted or baked - which is best?

We’ve had a great year for beetroot. We didn’t plant many seeds, but from the little space we dedicated to them we’ve had a decent crop. We’ve never actually grown beetroot before, so we haven’t had a lot of experience of cooking them in a way that makes the most of them. After our first harvest, we both fondly recalled an episode of the BBC’s Great British Food Revival, in which Antonio Carluccio simply baked a beetroot in a bucket outdoors and seemed to enjoy it immensely. We were eager to somehow replicate that experience, but with the days getting…

Our homegrown quince poached in syrup served with some clotted cream - yum!

Here at Slightly Self-Sufficient HQ, we love quinces. This fascination started about four years ago when we followed a Nigel Slater recipe for a Christmas pudding which called for a couple of quinces. Neither of us had ever used one before, and we found them astonishingly difficult to source. Then, in a remarkable act of serendipity, I started helping at a local community garden and found that there was a quince tree growing there. It had been a poor year for them, but I was told to help myself. So I took the two we needed for the recipe and…

A deliciously gorgeous sight: pears mulled in cider

A few weeks ago some neighbours kindly invited us to help ourselves to pears from their tree. When we got to their garden we discovered that they actually had several pear trees and they encouraged us to take far more than would keep fresh. Clearly a method of preservation was in order. I had something in mind, something which I had seen in the always inspiring River Cottage Handbook on Preserves. But when our neighbour informed us that it hadn’t been a particularly good year for her Conference pears, and that they were mostly small and woody, my mind was…

Layers of chopped runner beans separated by layers of salt.

Salting runner beans is the traditional method of preservation for this staple crop from the legume bed. Although this process is uncommon these days, it still has its merits to those of us who grow more runner beans that we wish to consume over the summer months. It’s not particularly time consuming, and it allows us to preserve our produce without taking up valuable freezer space. Read on to learn how to salt runner beans. 1. Sterilise a large jar and lid, then add some salt to create a thin layer about 5mm (0.2 in) thick. 2. Chop some runner…

Blanched and cooled runner beans packed ready for freezing.

This is the first in what is planned to be a series of posts on preserving runner beans. In future posts we hope to cover salting and pickling, but today’s post is about freezing. Freezing runner beans is the most modern, and arguably the most convenient, method of preserving runner beans. Our runner beans were a little late this year owing to the fact that we moved house in May. But once they got going we struggled to keep up. Preserving runner beans is a rewarding process that allows us to enjoy our crops over an extended season, and also…

The entirety of the second batch of chestnut mushrooms.

I thought it time I posted an update on our mushroom growing project. I posted back in July how we had harvested (and thoroughly enjoyed) our first batch of chestnut mushrooms, and that despite the warnings in the instructions that allowing them to grow too large would result in a smaller second crop, we let them grow too large. Well just a week after posting that, another decent sized mushroom grew and it looked as though a few more were on their way too. So we harvested the fully formed mushroom and waited eagerly for the rest to mature. But…

Our plum wine in a demijohn

I’ve mentioned before just how many plum trees there are in our garden. We used many of their plums in jams and chutneys, but I’m sad to say we struggled to keep up. Part of the problem was that most of the trees are self-seeded, and so close together that they have grown quite leggy and all of the branches are out of reach. I’d often come out to the garden of an evening and find a mass of plums had fallen, burst and been like that in the summer sun all day. In these conditions mother nature had started…

A 'Turk's Turban' Squash Growing in the Pumpkin Patch. There are a couple of smaller ones too.

Here at Slightly Self-Sufficient HQ we’ve been very excited about growing our own winter squashes. We’ve never had enough space to grow them before. We did try a dwarf ‘Butternut’ squash variety last year in a large pot, but it didn’t produce any fruit. So upon seeing the garden in our new house for the first time, Liz and I exclaimed in unison that we could finally grow squashes! Why have we been so excited to grow winter squashes? First and foremost, they make for excellent eating. They are a very versatile ingredient. They make fantastic soups and, unlike their…

The finished product - apricots bottled in syrup.

Having already made two batches of apricot jam, and a gallon of apricot wine, we decided our next adventure in apricot preservation would be bottling. The bottling of fruits is a centuries old tradition, nowadays all but replaced with tinned fruit. We don’t have the equipment necessary to tin our own fruit, so we decided to give bottling a go. We’d never done it before, but in the River Cottage Handbook on Preserves, Pam Corbin covers the process in some detail, including a very helpful table which shows, by fruit and by heating method (more on this later), the heating…

Blackberry and apple fruit leather cut into strips and ready to eat.

I mentioned in my post from the Friday before last that we had plans for the blackberries that the kids picked in the garden. We were all very excited about this as it is something that we’ve never tried before but have been meaning to do for some time: making fruit leather. Fruit leather is simply fruit dried into a thin, chewy sheet. In the River Cottage Handbook on Preserves, Pam Corbin has a recipe for a blackberry and apple fruit leather, so we decided to give that a go using the blackberries from the garden (topped up with the…

Slightly Self-Sufficient

Tasting The Good Life

Cooking Beetroot – Two Methods

Poached Quinces in Syrup

An Exciting Pear Preserve

How to Salt Runner Beans

How To Freeze Runner Beans

Last Batch of Mushrooms Harvested

Making Plum Wine

Pumpkin Patch Update

Bottling Apricots

Making Fruit Leather