Getting the most out of windfall apples

I know that apple season is coming to an end, and that this post would have been more useful about 2 weeks ago, but anyway, I would like to share here how I got 4 (or 5) products out of apples that were not the best to start with.

You will need: 

• Loads of apples
• A good bit of time and a little patience
• Something decent on the telly, radio or Netflix (I recommend Lillyhammer)
• A sharp paring knife
• A bucket
• A slow cooker, or a large pot
• Jars
• Sugar and some crab apples if making apple jelly
• A small amount of sugar for making vinegar
• Nylon sieve or jelly bag
• Colander

Step 1 (Apple peels and vinegar)
Peel your apples, core them and remove the nasty bits make vinegar out of these, see post about making apple vinegar http://rerootingthefuture.blogspot.ie/2013/09/apple-vinegar.html
Place the peeled apple pieces into the slow cooker with a little water and let it simmer down till pulpy (A pot on the stove will do, just be careful it does not burn!)

Step 2 (Stewed apple)
Once you have apple pulp, drain it through a colander to get much of the juice out (the obvious juice, don't try to extract all of the juice as you don't want dry stewed apples). Spoon the stewed apple into clean, scaled pickle jars. (Pickle jars should provide enough apple for making pies or for breakfasts for a family, smaller jars such as peanut butter jars would do two people for breakfast with yogurt and granola (yumm)) So now, you need to can the jars of stewed apple, see post about canning for more details, because the jars are fairly wide, heat it water to 77 degrees and keep it there for 40 mins to ensure that all of the jar's contents are sterilised. http://rerootingthefuture.blogspot.ie/2013/09/elderberry-cordialsyrup-and-elderberry.html There is no added sugar in this, so once the jar is open, use immediately or refrigerate and use the following day.

Step 3 (Dealing with the juice)
Strain the juice through a jellybag, coffee filter or nylon sieve, retain what was filtered out and add that to any remaining stewed apple, place this in the freezer till you have enough of it to make apple cheese, (recipe will follow in a few weeks). You now have two choices, you can drink the apple juice or make it into jelly, follow link for a jelly recipe. http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/10/apple-jelly-jam-recipe/, boil up a few crab apples in the juice and then remove their pulp before adding the sugar and making jelly, crab apples contain a lot of pectin and will help your jelly to set, especially as the first step removed the most pectin rich part of the apple. 
If you want to keep the juice for drinking later, you will need to sterilise it, this could be done by boiling the juice and immediately pouring it into a very clean, hot bottles, this should keep for a while, or you could can it.

Spiced apple jelly, plain apple jelly, elderberry jam, apple vinegar, stewed apple

So, five products from windfall apples
Vinegar, stewed apple, apple jelly or juice and apple cheese (paste to eat with cheese)

Nasturtium capers and haw-sin sauce

Two quick recipes today.

Nasturtium capers
Ingredients
Ripe, yet still green nasturtium seeds
Brine (100g salt/ liter of water)
Spiced vinegar (vinegar that has been steeped with a spice of your choice, eg. pepper corns, mace etc.)

Method
Pick enough nasturtium seeds as many nasturtium seeds as you would need
Wash them then steep them in brine
After 2 days, drain them and pack them into smallish jars, leaving 2cm between the top of the seeds and the top of the jar
Cover with cold, spiced vinegar and put the lid on
These should be ready for use after a month
Enjoy as part of tartare sauce or anywhere the recipe calls for capers

Haw-sin sauce (adapted from a recipe by Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall)
Ingredients

500g haw berries (berries from a haw thorn tree)

250ml cider vinegar (any fruit vinegar will do)

250ml water

250g sugar

salt and black pepper to taste

Method

Remove most of the stalks from the haw berries, rinse the berries in cold water
Put the berries into a pot with the water and the vinegar, bring to the boil. Simmer for around 30 mins till the skins start to split
Remove from the heat and rub the mixture through a colander to leave the stones behind, use a little additional water to wash as much of the pulp off of the stones as possible
Return the mixture to a clean pan, add the sugar and heat it gently, stirring constantly till the sugar dissolves
Bring to the boil and cook for another 5-10 mins till the sauce reduces and becomes somewhat syrupy
Season with salt and pepper to taste then pour into hot, sterilised bottles
Use where you would use hoi-sin sauce

Apple Vinegar

Vinegar with vinegar mother floating on it!

This is undoubtably the easiest, most frugal, most useful and hence the most pleasurable substance that I have made recently. (And it is delicious) This recipe is adapted from Katz's brilliant book 'Wild Fermentation' where he calls it fruit scrap vinegar.

I use apple scraps as that is what I have the most of, however other fruit scraps will do, including banana.

When I say apple scraps, I mean the peels, the cores, the bruises, the grubs, and everything in between that is not being turned into sauce, jelly or pies. I do not use the big bruises that are obviously growing fungi though. No need to wash the apples first, as the micro-organisms present in the skin aid the vinegar making process.

Method:

• Place apple scraps in a stainless steel or plastic container
• Cover with water
• Add 4tbs of sugar per liter of water added
• Use a plate to submerge the fruit pieces
• Cover with a tea towel
• Stir occasionally, leave for a week
• After a week or so, remove fruit pieces and compost them
• Allow the liquid to ferment for a further 2 weeks, still covered with the tea towel
• Stir occasionally
• It is done when it tastes like vinegar
• Remove the mother and use it to start off the next batch or to turn a failed wine into vinegar (the mother is the white film that may develop, I got two mothers from my first batch! 
• Strain your apple vinegar into clean bottles and use for pickling, sauce making or for when you need apple cider vinegar

Elderberry cordial/syrup and elderberry jam

Stripping elderberries from stems with a fork

This has been the first year in which I have properly utilised the abundance that hangs on elder trees at this time of the year. Now is the time to go find elderberries as the birds are now munching on them. Elderberries are seemingly excellent for boosting the immune system, and are supposed to be good medicine for giving to sufferers of colds and flues. Here follows the recipe that I use for making the cordial.

Strip your elderberries from the stems using a fork, into a pot or slow cooker, gently simmer the berries with a little water till mushy. (Slow cooker works well as it does not get to too high a temperature, thus preserving most of the health giving properties of the berries)

Use a masher to release as much juice as possible, and strain through a jellybag or nylon sieve to remove the pulp from the juice. Measure the juice, and to every 1L of juice, add 625g sugar (the juice is at this time cold, so using caster sugar will ensure that all of the sugar dissolves), mix this in and bottle it up into clean, scalded bottles. Old tomato-sauce bottles work well, also vinegar bottles.

Canning the juice

The next step is to can these bottles, this is done because there is not enough sugar in the solution to act as a natural preservative. Don't worry, canning is easy (when you have a thermometer). Into a deep pot (stock pot is ideal) put a folded up dish towel, place the bottles onto the tea towel and wedge more tea towels or newspaper around them so that they do not touch each other or the sides of the stock pot. Fill the pot with water so that water comes up to the level of the juice (it is useful to use bottles that are the same height), you do not want water getting in to the lid. Apply heat and allow the temperature to rise to 77 degrees C, you want to keep it at this temperature for 30 mins. If it goes much above 90 degrees, many of the health-giving properties of the elderberry may be lost. After 30 mins, remove them from the pot and ensure that their lids are firmly on. Congratulations, you have done some canning!

Remember the elderberry pulp that that is sitting in the jelly bag? Well that can be turned into jam- delicious jam. Some sources say to sieve the seeds out, but I don't think that seeds are a problem, sure isn't red current or gooseberry jam riddled with seeds? It is a good idea to use either jam sugar or a few apples to provide the pectin for this one. There are plenty of recipes for jam on the internet, so enough said.

Go on, enjoy some elderberries while they are still around

Kimchi: Another easy to make, live food

Kimchi is a traditional spicy Korean pickle, it is in essence an eastern take on sauerkraut. It is delicious, full of good lactobacilli bacteria and vegetables. It makes a pleasant condiment or as an accompaniment to rice. It is also a useful way to use up and preserve surplus hardish vegetables such as cabbage, carrots, radishes, Jerusalem artichokes and beetroots.

Here is the basic recipe, it is adapted from Sandor Ellix Katz brilliant book entitled 'Wild Fermentation'.

Cabbage & beetroot in brine at the start of the process

Equipment (what I use)
1.5L crock pot
small plate or saucer
weight (stone mortar)
around 1L capacity pickle jar with lid

Ingredients and method
Part 1.
A mix of vegetables to make up 1.5L or the size of your crock pot, for example, cabbage, carrots, radish, beetroot, (I have made one with sliced runner beans, carrot and broccoli, I have yet to try it). Slice these vegetables or grate them coarsely, place them in the crock pot and cover with brine. Brine in this case is made up of 1L of water with 4tbs (60ml) of non-iodised salt dissolved in it. Cover the veg with the brine, weigh it down with the saucer and the weight so as to completely cover each piece of veg with the brine. Leave for a few hours or overnight till softened.

Part 2.

Veg in brine weighted down in crock pot

Once the vegetables are soft, drain off the brine (and reserve it for the next batch, strain it, boil it, bottle it and when cool, store in the fridge for use in the next batch) and taste the veg, if it tastes unpleasantly salty, rinse and drain it. Make up the spice mix, this is composed of finely chopped onions (leeks, spring onions etc will also do), fresh, grated ginger, hot peppers (either fresh or dried) 3-4 cloves of garlic. Pound the garlic, ginger and peppers up together, mix in the finely chopped onions and mix into the vegetable mixture, fish sauce can be added at this time (traditional ingredient, I omit it as I like to keep this pickle vegetarian friendly, even though I am not a vegetarian) Pack the vegetables into the jar (scald the jar first with boiling water) really pack the veg in so that you expel most of the air spaces. Either weight it down with a smaller upturned lid that pushes the veg down into it's juice using the pressure from the jar's own lid or check it every day for a week and push the veg back down using clean fingers. I am inclined to keep the jar standing in a bowl as it does seep as the veg is fermenting. After a week, or when you deem it is pleasantly sour, seal the jar and put it in the fridge to slow down the ferment.The kimchi is now ready to eat.

The brine is good for a second batch, after which I would be inclined to dump it. If it does not taste salty enough, add an extra teaspoon or two of salt.

4 jars of kimchi made in the last two weeks.

Bread, front yard gardening and broad bean hummus

View of our west facing window, cucumber plants

I am going to share the best (most fool proof) yeast bread recipe that I have ever used with you. It is adapted from a post by the blog Chickens in the Road, where it is called Grandmother bread.

To make 2 medium sized loaves

3 cups liquid, gently heated to body temperature (water, whey, buttermilk, milk or kefir will work),

to this add 2tbs sugar, 10g yeast and 2tsp salt. Wait for 5 mins till the yeast goes fluffy before adding 3 of the 7 cups of flour. Work the 3 cups of flour in with a stiff wooden spoon and add more flour gradually until a nice, non soggy ball of dough is achieved. At this time, add your extra options such as half a cup of linseed and half a cup of wheatgerm or oat bran or anything to hand that will add fiber and nutrition to the bread.  Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface till such time as it stops being sticky and it looks more elastic than the dough you started with (this will take 12-15 minutes). Put it in a bowl and leave in a warmish spot till the dough doubles in size. Grease your loaf tins and punch the dough down, form it into loaves so that it sits half way to two thirds of the way up the tin. Any surplus can be formed into rolls, or twists or whatever you like. Allow the dough to rise again till it doubles in size. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and gently transfer your dough into the oven without knocking or bumping it, you don't want any of the air to escape from the loaf at this point as it will result in a heavy loaf. Spray some water into the oven when you put your loaves in and again a minute later, this will allow the dough to expand in the heat a bit without being hindered by the forming crust. This will also result in a crisper crust.  Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, remove to a wire rack, and remove the tin, knock the bottom of the loaf as if knocking on a door, the sound should be fairly hollow (Thwackable as the bread experts say) If it does not sound right (this comes with practice) return it to the oven and turn the oven off.  Let it cook in the residual heat for 15 minutes or so. By the way, do not be tempted to eat your bread fresh out of the oven, it is still cooking and its proteins are still changing and setting. It will still be warm after 45 mins when it would be a safe time to tuck into it.

At- a- glance guide to making “Grandmother” bread

Where the mixed seeds were planted

Ingredients

3 cups liquid

2tbs sugar

2tsp salt

10g yeast

7 cups flour

Optional extras

linseed

wheatgerm

oat bran

Method

Heat liquid to blood temperature

Add sugar, salt and yeast, wait 5 mins for yeast to fluff up

Add 3 cups flour, stir in

Add rest of flour gradually, mixing it in as you go

Add optional extras

Knead it out on a lightly floured surface for 12-15 mins

Place in a bowl with a lid  (cling film) till it doubles in size

Punch dough down, form into loaves

Allow dough to rise up again

Preheat oven to 180 degrees

Gently transfer to oven

Spray inside oven with water

Let bread cook for 25-35 mins

Check for thwackablility

Let loaves rest for 45 mins as they cool

The south facing wall 

Enjoy with butter!

We live in an apartment type dwelling surrounded by concrete. So this year, I decided to actively make our neighbourhood prettier using plants. This first area tackled was the walk up to the apartment, there was some soil there (hard and compact) and this was raked one night in April and a mixed bunch of seeds planted. Thus far, a calendula, a dill plant and a cosmos plant have come up. So exciting. The next task was to deal with the south facing wall adjacent to the houses (apartments) So, the fishbox that was already there got appropriated (filled with soil and then with surplus plants, mainly beans, nasturtiums, a lettuce, a lady's mantel and some sweetpea. And another fishbox was added. I know that the fishbox is the property of someone else, but they let said fishbox wash up on the shore, and become litter on the beach. So I de-littered the beach by removing it. (If someone wants it back, they can come and get it) Anyway, this one was planted up with sunflowers (I never would have guessed that sunflowers are such thirsty creatures) and bush beans (dwarf french beans). My next project is to spread the word that this is free food for the neighbourhood. I am not entirely sure how to go about this, perhaps a handmade flyer to each house. I have also planted up some shopping bags with sweetpea, sunflowers, zinnia and runner beans, these stand guard beside the door  leading to our apartment. (The landlord swung by a few weeks ago and made a comment on all the 

plants  growing, my immediate response to him was “its lovely isn't it?” and he could not help but agree)

This week, I had access to a load of broad beans that had passed their best.

So I spent some time removing the beans from their pods, and simmering them for 20 or so minutes till soft. These are now in the freezer ready to turn into hummus.

Broad bean hummus

Lightly cooked broad beans, mashed and thrown into food processor with:

Garlic

Lemon juice

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Tahini is optional I think

Blitz till a nice consistancy is reached.

Refrigerate and use within 3 days

The maths

This week, I figured I should share with you the numbers associated with living well and buying less. Many of these costs and timings are approximate, and it will depend on where you source your ingredients or how accurate you estimate your appliance's power usage. I make yogurt every 10 or so days, reserving some from the previous batch to use in the following batch. Bread gets baked every nine days or so. I freeze the ones that are not in use and defrost them as needed. I make granola regularly too, sometimes I am coordinated enough to follow the bread with the granola in the cooling oven, thus saving electricity. Anyway, I hope the numbers speak for themselves and perhaps persuade you to try making yogurt or home made bread. Bread recipe is on its way, though if you can't wait a few more days for my take on it, the basic recipe can be found following this link. http://chickensintheroad.com/cooking/grandmother-bread/

Yogurt:
Tools needed (slow cooker, spoon, food thermometer, blankets and a duvet to insulate it overnight)
1 x 1 off cost: yogurt starter, €1.50 (good for 8-10 goes) ~ 15c a batch
2 x 2L milk, 2 x 1.45 = 2.90
electricity: I am not sure what its wattage is, but lets assume that it takes 50c to operate the slow cooker for the 2 hours that it is on to reach the 85 degrees.
10c to boil the kettle to sterilise the peanut butter jars.
Therefore, each 4 litre batch costs around €3.65 = 45.6c/500ml jar which is still cheaper that buying live yogurt.
Time: 2-3 hours to heat milk in slow cooker, (check every half hour till temp is close to 85 degrees)
cooling to 49 degrees takes around 30mins, (less if using an ice water bath) Adding culture: 2 mins, leave overnight.

Bread:
2 x 7g yeast = 27c
approx 1.5kg flour = €1.10
salt, sugar, wheatgerm and linseeds come to approx. 50c
oven use at 180 degrees C for 35mins is I guess €1
Therefore, 3 medium sized loaves of homemade bread + 2 rolls costs around €2.87 which I think is worth making as I can choose what goes into it.
Time: Prep time including kneading and shaping bread, 30mins, Proofing the dough (letting it rise) can take a few hours depending on the temperature of the room. Cooking time is 25-30 mins.

Thanks for reading