Living a Life at the Beach: Down right saucy......

Saturday, March 09, 2013

Down right saucy......

The tomatoes in the veggie garden are coming along thick and fast now, we picked over 11kgs of them the other day. Then Glen our neighbour turned up with a big bucket of nashi pears and something had to be done about them..

It's been a couple of years since I've spent time in the kitchen preserving and I was really a bit rusty but after searching through some recipes I found one that appealed and me being me pretty much ignored it! Well not entirely I used the same ingredients but not the same quantities.

The actual recipe was from the Edmonds cookbook for tomato sauce
3.5kgs toms, chopped
1kg apples, peeled and chopped
6 onions
3 cups sugar
4 cups DMC malt vinegar
2 tblsps salt
1/2 - 1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp whole allspice
2 tsps whole cloves
Put toms, apples, onions, sugar, vinegar, salt & cayenne into preserving pan. Tie peppercorns, allspice & cloves into a muslin bag and add. Boil steadily fro about 2 hours or until completely pulpy. Discard whole spices. Press through colander or coarse sieve. Return to pan, boil for 2 mins, Pour into sterilised bottles and seal.

Basically mine was approximately....

8kgs tomatoes (from the garden)
1kg apples (found in the freezer from gawd knows when)
1kg of nashi pears
10-12 red onions (varying sizes, from the garden)
6 cups sugar
8 cups malt vinegar (half of this was cider vinegar, it was what I had)
4 tsps salt
2 tsps cayenne pepper
2 tsps black peppercorns
2 tsps ground allspice (reduce the last 2 ingredients if you don't like it too hot)
2 tsp whole cloves

I peeled all the tomatoes first by cutting a cross in the bottom of the tomato and placing in hot water, the skins peel off really easy and then I pretty much squished them in my hands removing the central core.

Chopped up the onions..

I put the toms in a big preserving pan (first time I've used it, op shopped last year) with the onions, pears and apples and pretty much everything else. (Peppercorns and cloves went into a muslin bag)

I let it bubble away for best part of the afternoon

..and after about an hour and half I used my stick blender to blend it all smoother. There were some big chunks. And then, in small batches, pushed it all through a sieve to get rid of the seeds etc, I didn't want them in my sauce. This is what was taken out.

I wasn't getting the thickness I was after though, it was still too soup like..

So I added some Jam setting mix....3 packets of it!! But it did the trick!

And this is what I ended up with

We had some last night with our dinner and it was rather splendid if I must say so myself!

Oh and I didn't stop there, no sirree. There were some plums hanging around and not being eaten so they've gone into a big bucket along with a load of berries from the freezer to make plumberry wine

And as I had so many pears, I'm making a batch of pear wine too...

It doesn't look very appetising at the moment, once it's been put through muslin to get rid of the pulp and got yeast in it, it will start looking like wine. I have some feijoas I need to use up too, I'll be doing them either today or tomorrow.

Alice and Cedric, our HelpXers left today, they had come back for my party. It was lovely to have them back. One day we may see them again, maybe a trip to Paris is in order when we are back in the UK later in the year. It's been lovely having them here, we are very grateful for all of their help.

Bon Voyage and Au revoir!

We were out and about this morning and a bit of shopping was included...well it has to be done!

I had some birthday money from mum and dad and I've been after a digital photo frame for ages, I put the money towards this one... thank you mummy and daddy ♥

Oh and I have to show you these, Joe was buying some shoes today and I was drawn like a magnet to the 'Sale' rack (how could you not be!) and well I just had to have these!!