Wednesday, March 31, 2010

In the kitchen - Pear ginger, bottled cherry toms and freezing

Pear ginger

Ingredients:

6lb pears, cut into 8ths (next time I'll just chop them)
4 1/2lb sugar
1/2lb preserved ginger (chopped)
2 minced lemons

Method:
Peel and cut pears into eigths, sprinkle with half the sugar, covr and leave overnight.
Add remainder of sugar, the lemons and ginger.
Boil for about two hours.

I found the pears stayed in one piece, so I whizzed them up with my stick blender.



Whole cherry tomatoes and caper pickles, with feta cheese

This was a variation on these that I did a while ago,

Freezing veggies.
At the weekend we froze some yellow beans and some corn. The beans were home grown but the corn was shop bought.

The corn:
For that last two years, courtesy of the pigs, our corn has been a disaster, corn never fully recovers from having its head bitten off let alone it's ears!!
Woolworths were selling 6 corn cobs for $1.99, half price, which works out at 33cents a cob, so we bought two bags, if there's any left on Saturday I might get some more.
Husks off and cut into three
Placed in boiling water for a couple of minutes, this is called blanching, it's to stop the sugars turning to starch (probably a bit late for the shop bought stuff :-P)

Then plunged into iced water to stop the cooking process

Then I placed them on a baking sheet in the freezer overnight

Then bagged up, easy free flow corn cobs


The beans

Blanched, placed in layers between baking paper sheets and left to freeze overnight
and we have free flow beans

4 comments:

  1. I do love jam with ginger in it and pear and ginger...mmmm. I like to freeze excess or cheap vegies and sometimes I dehydrate them (takes up less room for storage).

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  2. Thanks, Sue. You always explain these kitchen procedures so well.

    I've always wondered about blanching... now I know what it's for!

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  3. I absolutely love corn on the cob. That little lot would keep me going all year. Great idea.
    Tracey x

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  4. Hi ladies and thanks for the comments ☺ That pear ginger goes very well with blue, brie and camembert cheeses, the ginger gives the jam a savoury side to it. We've used it instead of a pear jelly, it's a pretty good substitute. Just make sure the cheese are room tempersture and almost oozing, it's to die for ♥

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