Plum Jam

Makes about 4.5kg

Ingredients:

2.7kg plums
2.7kg sugar
A knob of butter

Method:

Put the plums in a preserving pan with 900ml of water and gently simmer for about 30 minutes, until the fruit is very soft and the contents of the pan are well reduced.
Remove the pan from the heat, add the sugar, stirring until dissolved. Add the butter and blend well into the mixture. Bring to the boil and boil rapidly for 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently, until the setting point is reached.
Take the pan off the heat. Using a slotted spoon, skim off any scum from the surface of the jam and remove the plum stones. Pour the hot preserve into warm sterilised jam jars, then cover and label.

Cooks Tips

If dessert plums are used, rather than the cooking variety, add the juice of 1 large lemon.
This jam can also be made with peaches, but the stones should be removed before putting in the pot and the juice of 2 lemons should be added.
For a more savoury variation on this jam, add 5ml crushed chillies. This jam is great added to sauces for pork and chicken.

Gooseberry and Elderflower Jam

Makes about 1.6kg

Ingredients:

900g green gooseberries, topped and tailed
900g granulated sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
300ml elderflower cordial

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Put the gooseberries in a preserving pan with 150ml water, then cook over a low heat until the gooseberries are very soft. Meanwhile, put the sugar in a large roasting pan and warm in the oven for 10 minutes.
Add the lemon juice, elderflower cordial and warmed sugar to the gooseberries, bring to the boil and simmer gently until the sugar has dissolved. Increase the heat and bubble for 25-30 minutes or until the jam is set. Pour the hot preserve into warm sterilised jam jars, then cover and label.

Apricot Jam

Makes about 3kg

Ingredients:

1.8kg apricots, halved and stoned, stones reserved
Juice of 1 lemon
1.8kg sugar
A knob of butter

Method:

Crack a few of the apricot stones with a nut cracker, take out the kernels and blanch them in boiling water for 1 minutes, then drain.
Put the apricots, lemon juice, apricot kernels and about 450ml of water in a preserving pan and simmer for about 15 minutes or until well reduced and the fruit is soft.
Off the heat, add the sugar, stirring to dissolve. Add the butter and boil rapidly for 15 minutes or until the setting point is reached.
Remove any scum with a slotted spoon. Pour the hot preserve into warm sterilised jam jars, then cover and label.

Strawberry and Redcurrant Jam

Makes about 1.4kg

Ingredients:
700g granulated or preserving sugar
1kg strawberries, hulled and halved if large
225g redcurrants, stripped from their stalks
Juice of 1 lemon

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Put the sugar in a roasting tin and warm in the oven for 10 minutes. Put half the strawberries and all the redcurrants in a preserving pan over a low heat and cook until soft and the juices run.
Add the remaining strawberries to the pan and bring to the boil. Add the lemon juice and warmed sugar to the pan, bring to the boil, then simmer until the sugar dissolves. Bubble for 25 minutes or until set.
Pour the hot preserve into warm sterilised jam jars, then cover and label.

Raspberry and Cinnamon Jam

Makes about 1kg

Ingredients:
900g granulated or preserving sugar
900g raspberries
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cinnamon stick, crushed and tied in muslin

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Put the sugar in a roasting tin and warm in the oven for 10 minutes. Put the raspberries in a preserving pan and cook over low heat for 5 minutes or until the juices run. Add the warmed sugar, lemon juice and the cinnamon stick.
Bring to the boil, then simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Bubble for 15 minutes or until set, then remove the cinnamon stick.
Pour the hot preserve into warm sterilised jam jars, then cover and label.

Making Jam and Preserves

The end of summer, when there is lots of fruit around, is a great time to make jam and preserves. Here are a few things you should know about making jams.

Tips

• Before you start, put four saucers in the fridge or freezer to chill ready to repeat testing for setting as needed.


• A large preserving pan with a wide top id essential for its size and shape – it helps the evaporation process, ensuring the finished preserve is not too runny. Stainless steel or non-stick pans are best.


• Preserving sugar is a superior quality course grain sugar that gives a clear set ideal for jellied preserves, but it’s not essential for marmalade and jam and it’s much more expensive than granulated sugar.


• Jam sugar is not the same as preserving sugar – it’s a granulated sugar with added pectin and citric acid to aid the setting of fruits that have a naturally low pectin content such as strawberries and cherries.
  

Setting Agents

• Preserving sugar produces less scum, dissolves easily and produces sparkling jellies and lams. Jam sugar is used for fruits with low pectin and acid level.


• Pectin makes preserves set when fruit is heated with sugar. However, many summer fruits are low in pectin, so if your jam or marmalade is not setting, add extra lemon juice – a good natural source of pectin. Alternatively, use an artificial pectin – add one sachet per 1 kg of granulated sugar.
  

Setting Point

When jam reaches setting point it’s ready to bottle. Test regularly for a set. If the preserve is boiled for too long it darkens and caramelises. There are two good ways of testing this stage:

• Spoon a little jam or marmalade on to a chilled plate, then chill for a minute or two. If it crinkles when you run your finger through it from the edge, setting point has been reached.


• Take the guess work out of getting the perfect set by using a jam thermometer. Generally speaking, the setting point will be around 105°C.
  

Bottling Tips

• Before use, wash jars in hot water, drain, then leave to dry in a warm oven (150°C). Boil the lids. Alternatively, a fast wash in the dish washer is ideal.


• Always pour hot preserves into warm jars.


• Always fill to the rim to allow for shrinkage on cooling.


• Cover with waxed discs, waxed side down, and dampened cellophane covers, dampened side up.


• For longer-term storage, cover the screw-on lids, too.


• For best results, store preserves in a cool dark place.
  

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Lamb Dhansak

This is a one pot curry that just needs rice and a relish or chutney to go with it. You could also make it with chicken instead of lamb. Ideally, this needs to be started the day before it is to be eaten.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:
500g stewing lamb or mutton, cut into cubes
500g yellow lentils
110g red lentils
110g mung beans, soaked overnight
Oil or ghee for frying
2 red onions, peeled and finely sliced
5ml turmeric powder
5ml coriander powder
5ml cumin powder
1 brinjal (aubergine), peeled and diced
250g pumpkin or butternut squash, peeled and diced
Salt
500g fresh spinach leaves, well washed and drained

For the Curry Paste:
6-8 garlic cloves, peeled
5cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
6-8 dried red chillies
6 green cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
5ml black peppercorns
15ml coriander seeds
15ml cumin seeds

Method:
Rinse and drain the lentils and mung beans. Grind all the curry paste ingredients with a little water to make a smooth paste.

Heat the oil or ghee and fry the onions until golden brown, then stir in the curry paste, turmeric, coriander and cumin and stir-fry gently for about 5 minutes.

Stir in the lamb and cook gently over a low heat until the meat is coated with the curry paste and any liquid from the meat has been absorbed. The dish should be quite dry.

Add the lentils, mung beans, brinjal and pumpkin or squash and stir in a little water to form a gravy. Season with salt. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently for about 30 minutes until the meat is cooked and tender.

Remove the meat from the pan and put to one side. Purée the lentils, vegetables and gray with a hand blender and return the meat to this mixture.

Quickly stir-fry the spinach in hot oil, then add to the lamb mixture and serve.

A Pickle of a Pawpaw

We call them pawpaws in South Africa, but here in the UK they are referred to as papaya. This wonderful fruit of the Carica papaya is native to the American tropics and was cultivated in Mexico for hundreds of years before becoming known in other parts of the world. Today it grows in many warm countries including Natal, where it springs up all over the place, its seeds spread by birds in their droppings. The ripe fruit is normally eaten raw, but in South East Asia, in particular, the green unripe fruit is cooked and eaten in salads and chutneys. They can also be used to make jams with other fruits as they have a high pectin content.

The seeds of the pawpaw, or papaya, are quite an interesting commodity. They can be dried and used as a substitute for pepper, their sharp spicy taste giving piquancy to a dish. Papaya seeds have also been used in India and Pakistan as an abortifacient in females and contraceptive in males, but I don’t recommend this application without proper advice.

One of the great benefits of pawpaw, for which I can recommend it from personal experience, is that it is an asset in weight management. It contains a protease enzyme known as Papain, which not only helps to tenderise meat, but also helps in the breakdown and removal of fat from the body. So if you’re looking to manage your weight, eat the ripe fruit regularly. It is also known to contain Lycopene, which is an immune stimulant with anti cancer potential.

To make Pawpaw Pickle

Ingredients:
Makes 3 x 175ml (6oz) jars

1 green or unripe pawpaw – papaya
15ml salt
1 medium red or white onion, roughly chopped
1 green chilli, seeds included and finely chopped
185ml malt vinegar
185ml water
250g sugar
30ml tandoori masala or chilli powder

Method:
Peel and chop the pawpaw into quarters and remove the seeds. Cut the flesh into thin slices and place them in a glass or plastic bowl. Cover the fruit with the salt, tossing to ensure complete coverage and marinate for at least an hour.

Drain the excess liquid that has been drawn out of the fruit by the salt and place the fruit into a saucepan with the onion, green chilli and chilli powder. Add water, sugar and vinegar and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for about 15-20 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool.

Spoon the fruit mixture into sterilised jars and pour over the vinegar syrup and seal the jars while still hot. Store at room temperature, or in the fridge once opened.

Mixed Vegetable Achar

Achar is a type of pickle, which originated in Malaysia. Some achars use vinegar and oil as preservatives, but I was taught to make it with mustard oil as the preservative medium. I have seen recipes that use vegetable oil and mustard powder added, but they don’t give the genuine result of the ‘Indian Achar’ I know and love, but rather come out more like piccalilli. If you are unable to get mustard oil, which is readily available from Indian or Asian supermarkets, then use vegetable oil but add more mustard seeds.

This makes about 8 x 454g jars.

Ingredients:
1 – 1.5kg carrots
500g green beans
1 small cabbage – preferably white cabbage, not Savoy
1 small cauliflower
15ml mustard seeds
15ml cumin seeds
15ml sesame seeds
12 chillies, split lengthwise, seeds left in
15ml salt
5ml ground mace
5ml ground cloves
5ml ground cardamom
30ml tandoori spice or ground chilli powder
250ml muscovado sugar
750ml mustard oil – or vegetable oil and mustard seeds

Method:

Peel the carrots and cut them into julienne pieces. I’m lazy; I put them through the chipper plate in the food processor. It might give a bit of a choppy mess with lots of little bits, but it’s for pickle, so it doesnt need to be perfect...

Wash the beans well – I find they always have a bit of dirt on them and if you don’t wash them they can add grit to your pickle. Top and tail the beans , then cut them on a slant into ½ cm lengths – the thin slither eradicates any stringiness they might have.

Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage and cut it into quarters. Cut out the hard central core and slice up the rest of the cabbage as you would for coleslaw – again, I’m lazy and run it through the thick slicer plate in the food processor.

Break up the cauliflower into small florets, cutting the larger florets in half or quarters and discarding the thick stalks. I usually cut up some of the thinner stalks into thin slithers just to add some bulk and crunch to the achar.

Blanch all the vegetables in a large pot of boiling water for 5- 10 minutes, until they are softened. Drain the water off and allow them to dry. In Durban when I made this I would lay the vegetables out on a large sheet in the sun, but we don’t have the space or get that kind of sunshine in the UK, so here I put the vegetables on baking trays and dry them for about 30 minutes in a low oven, about 150C. Once the vegetables are suitably dried – they only need to have some of the moisture taken out so they are not wet – put them into a large pickling basin.

Now you need to sterilise your jars. I usually do this by first soaking and washing the jars well in warm soapy water to remove any dirt they may have left from their previous use and to remove any labels. Once they are clean, I rinse them in warm water and place them on a baking or roasting tray. Into each jar, I pout about 1 inch of water and then put them in the oven at about 120-150C for a half an hour. If your jars have metal caps, the best way to sterilise these is to put them in a pot of water on the stove and boil them for about 10 minutes. Leave your jars in the oven and the caps in boiling water until needed.

When your jars are almost ready in the oven, make the tempering to go on the vegetables. Put the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, sesame seeds and chillies in a frying pan with about 100ml mustard oil and bring them up to heat until the cumin seeds are spitting and the mustard seeds are jumping. Pour this tempering over the vegetables in the bowl and mix through.

Mix the salt, ground mace, ground cloves, ground cardamom, tandoori spice or ground chilli powder and sugar in a bowl and add to the vegetables, blending the spices through the mixture. Now you can spoon the vegetables into prepared sterilised jars.

Lightly heat the mustard oil – or vegetable oil and mustard seeds if you prefer – in a saucepan. As soon as the oil begins to smoke, remove it from the heat and allow it to cool slightly for 4-5 minutes. Pour the oil into the jars over the vegetables until the vegetables are covered – this may take a couple of top ups in each jar as the oil makes its way through the vegetables and settles in the jars. Once all the jars are filled, you can seal the jars with their lids. Store at room temperature for about 2 weeks before using. This pickle should keep for at least 6 months or more.

August Fruit and Vegetables

August is the month to make the most of the last lazy days of summer and its abundance of fresh produce. The crops may be changing, but the picture for this month closely resembles that of the last, July. This is the month to gladden the hearts of vegetable lovers. Good English strawberries are now on their way out and asparagus and Jersey Royals are mostly finished, but other potatoes like Maris Piper, which are great for summer salads, are particularly good this month.

As for greens, there is so much to get excited about in August that it’s hard to know where to start. Sweetcorn, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, salad leaves, and courgettes – these are all continuing to thrive under the summer sun. This is also the peak time for UK herbs, which will be popping up in domestic gardens and on commercial farms; get maximum mileage out of these summer luxuries while they last.

Other new vegetable arrivals will be aubergines and peppers, which are grown outdoors in the hot weather of southern France and Italy. Take advantage of these sunshine fruits now and through to September with ratatouille, relishes, and salsas or add them to the barbecue with courgettes to make a seasonal summer vegetable platter.

Another true August star is runner beans, always at their best if picked young before they have had a chance to develop the powerful string and skins that make preparation and eating a bit of a chore. Slicing and buttering them with buttery hazel or cob nuts is an unusual way to serve them. If you can only find the larger beans, de-stringing, slicing, and long cooking are more or less essential, or you could use mangetout, which should also be at their best this month, which make an easier replacement.

Don’t forget the new crops of cauliflower, beetroot, carrots and leeks, all of which should be at their youngest and most tender. This is the prime time to eat cauliflower and carrots raw, as crudités with dips or vinaigrettes, and also the best time to put up a store of achar or piccalilli for the year ahead.

Vegetable soups are also an area to explore in the month of August. Be adventurous with ‘Tomato and Red Pepper Soup’ or a delectable Magic Vegetable Soup’.

Another vegetable to pounce on when you see them are the best of the summer’s globe artichokes from France and Italy. They should start arriving early in the month. Globe artichokes, the flower head of a member of the thistle family, are among the strangest of all vegetables. Something like 80% of each flower is inedible, but these are also one of the most luxurious of vegetables, which are at their height in high summer. There are two types available: small ones from Italy and large ones from Brittany in France. Care is needed in buying: there should be no sign of browning or shrivelling, and the tips of the leaves should feel soft rather than sharp and spiny. Go for specimens with tightly packed, crisp green or purple leaves with a slight bloom. Fresh ones should feel heavy for their size, and the leaves should 'squeak' when the bud is gently squeezed. Artichokes hold a lot of grit, which is best removed by soaking and then giving a vigorous shaking in the water.

When cooking artichokes, iron, copper and aluminium cookware may cause artichokes to discolour; stainless steel, glass or enamel is the better cookware to use.

To prepare whole, cut the tough tips of the leaves off with scissors, holding the stalk to keep the artichoke steady. Using a knife, slice the base off, so that it will sit upright, before trimming off the pointed top - the younger the artichoke, the less you'll need to cut off. Pull the pale centre leaves out, then scoop the choke out with a spoon, without disturbing the heart underneath.
To prevent browning, drop each one in a bowl of water to which a little lemon juice has been added. Cook them in a pan of boiling salted water for 35-45 minutes - when they're ready you should easily be able to pull out a leaf. Drain upside down.

To prepare artichokes for storing, steam or boil them as described above, then bottle them in olive oil. These are great as part of an Italian anti pasti, for putting on pizza or serving with salads.

Artichokes can also be barbecued or grilled: cut in half lengthways, remove the choke, brush with olive oil and grill for 30 minutes, until tender.

For fruit, most summer berries are available and it’s definitely time to get out your jam making equipment, if you haven’t already. August is the start of the blackberry season. With the help of this wonderful dark berry you’ll be able to make summer puddings of distinction or make the most marvellous jams. Good English cherries are also in abundance now, as well as blackcurrants and blueberries. Peaches, apricots and nectarines are at their best now and the same goes for melons, which are never better than they are at this time of the year.