Preserving

Spiced Plum Jam Recipe

Spiced plum jam recipe

This spiced plum jam recipe is one that we have been perfecting for the last few years. We settled on this mix of spices when we used to make a spiced jam from foraged damsons and crab apples. When we moved to our current house a couple of years ago, there were so many plum trees in the garden that we started making it all plum. This is how we have made our jam the last two years and both batches were absolute triumphs. Ideally you should include a good few plums that aren’t yet quite ripe, as they are…

River Cottage Handbook No.2 - Preserves

Like all of the books in this series, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall writes the introduction to this book, but the actual subject matter itself is written by the relevant expert from the River Cottage TV series. In this case Pam ‘The Jam’ Corbin. Corbin and her husband founded and owned the jam manufacturers Thursday Cottage, and she is still heavily involved in the company. She has also appeared in several episodes of River Cottage, as well as running the preserve courses offered by River Cottage. Having long been fans of the River Cottage TV series, a few years back Liz and I…

A jar of homemade pickled runner beans.

In previous posts we detailed how to freeze runner beans and how to salt runner beans. In this post we look at a third method of runner bean preservation: pickling. How to Pickle Runner Beans Equipment: Large saucepan or preserving pan 1.5 litre jar Ingredients: 500g runner beans 2.5 pints distilled vinegar Spices for spice bag Method: Choose your spices and make up a spice bag. We used 8 peppercorns, 6 cloves, 5 all spice and a stick of cinnamon. Tie the spice bag to the handle of the saucepan and pour in the vinegar. Bring to the boil…

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…

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…

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…

Homemade apricot wine fermenting in a demijohn

After making two batches of apricot jam, and with our neighbours still offering more fruit, we decided to look for other methods of apricot preservation. One of my first ports of call is always Brian Leverett’s Winemaking Month by Month book. As usual it didn’t disappoint. Leverett’s standard apricot wine recipe calls for sultanas to improve the body of the wine. However, he does offer a variation of the recipe which doesn’t use any sultanas, instead using more sugar than the standard recipe. Leverret says that wine made by this variation of the recipe lacks the body of the standard,…

Slightly Self-Sufficient

Tasting The Good Life

Preserving

Spiced Plum Jam Recipe

River Cottage Preserves Handbook – Review

How to Pickle Runner Beans

An Exciting Pear Preserve

How to Salt Runner Beans

How To Freeze Runner Beans

Making Plum Wine

Bottling Apricots

Making Fruit Leather

Making Apricot Wine