Bottling it

I adapted a recipe from my favourite bottling book*, and bottled little Catalan pears in Priorat wine:

• 4 tall jars
• about 1.5kg pears
• 1kg sugar
• 500ml wine
• 500ml water
• Spices (I used cloves, cinnamon and juniper)
• Juice of one lemon

A nice pear

Pour water and wine into a large pan. Add the sugar and stir while cold until as much of the sugar as possible has dissolved. Heat gently, stirring, to ensure that the sugar fully dissolves, then boil gently with the lid off for 15 minutes. You should have a rich syrup. Cool, for about 30 minutes.

Juice the lemon into a bowl. Peel each pear, cutting out stalk and core, and dip in the lemon juice.

Pack the pears into clean, sterile jars. Pour over the syrup and shoogle the jar about a bit to get rid of bubbles. The jar should be filled to 1cm of the rim. Place tops on jars but not screwed tight.

Place jars into pan filled with water to at least two thirds of the height of the jars. I put a dishcloth in the pan to prevent the jars from banging together. Boil with the lid on the pan for 40 minutes. Open the pan lid quickly and screw down the jar lids fully. Put back the lid and leave to stand overnight while the whole lot cools down.

Label and store in a dark cupboard until you can resist them no longer...


*Lasnet de Lanty, Henriette, and Michèle Parfonry. Confits, confitures et conserves. Sens pratique. Neuilly-sur-Seine: Dargaud, 1978.

I'm jamming...

Today's batch of apricot jam looks pretty good:

I adapted the recipe from my favourite jams and conserves cook book: "Confits, Confitures et Conserves" by Henriette Lasnet de Lanty and Michèle Parfonry (Dargaud, Paris, 1978). Just in case you don't have your copy handy, here's the instructions:

1kg of apricots
450g of sugar
Zest and juice of one lemon

Stone the apricots. Reserve six stones and crack them open. Put the kernels into the pan.

Chop up the apricots into rough dice. Pop into the pan.

Zest the lemon and put zest and juice into the pan.

Heat up gently to boiling, stirring to ensure it does not stick. Boil with the lid on for 5 minutes. This softens the fruit into a mush. Cook approximately 15 minutes. Take off the heat

Add sugar. Stir, until all the sugar is dissolved.

Return pan to the cooker, and heat up to fast boil.

Test for temperature with a jam thermometer. When it reaches 102ºC turn off the heat.

You will need 3-4 jars, washed, rinsed  and heated in the oven.

When you have potted the jam, put the jars in a bain marie (i.e. in a pan of water, up to their necks.) I put a tea towel in the base of the pan to stop the jars banging about too much. Bring up to boil, and boil for 20 minutes. Screw down lids tight.

Label and store. The flavour from the kernels will spread through the jam, so store for a week or two at least.

High protein wheat free bread - recipe

After months of research in my cuisine laboratoire* I have come up with a wheat –free recipe for bread, that works.

Ingredients:

1 level teaspoon sugar

150 ml milk, warmed slightly to tepid

100g oat flour

1 sachet (11g) dried yeast,  or use live yeast if you prefer

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon salt

50g rolled oats

200g chickpea (gram) flour

50g butter, melted

1 large egg

1 tablespoon warm water, to moisten

Olive oil

Set the oven at 190ºC

Warm the milk to tepid, dissolve the sugar in it. Mix the dried yeast, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt with the oat flour.

Pour the warm milk and sugar mixture into the oat flour, stir and leave to stand 10 minutes.

Beat the egg. Melt the butter and cool a little.

Add the rolled oats, the chickpea flour, the egg and the butter to the mixture, and stir for 5 minutes. Add a little warm water to moisten the mixture – the dough should be hard to stir but not impossible.

Cover with a damp cloth, and leave in a warm place for 2-3 hours. It will rise a little.

Oil a small bread tin, and line with greaseproof paper (baking parchment.)

Put the mixture into the tin. Using the back of a spoon, oiled with olive oil, smooth off the top, spreading a little oil across the top as you do so.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 30 minutes. Check with a skewer – it should come out dry.

Remove from oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes in the tin. Then turn onto a cooling rack and remove the baking parchment.

This is a high protein bread, thanks to the combination of the egg and the chickpea flour.  Using my copy of Eat Well and Keep Healthy (Macdonald, London, a million years ago) given to me by my Mum when I was 18 (which IS a million years ago) I estimate that each slice of bread, weighing in at 50g, contains 8g of protein. That’s more than three times as much as in a slice of normal bread, and about the same, gram for gram, as white fish.

*Yes. I'm joking.