Apple Jelly, Pectin and Puree

The humble apple is the jam makers friend indeed. The fruit is high in pectin so when added (either as juice or puree) to other fruits, it helps the jam set. Or make a juice from the cooked fruit to make jewel like jellies. Here is my recipe for making jellies, the juice that I use as a “natural pectin” and a puree that I add to jams and chutneys.

The very best apples to use are the sour green early season apples which are sold cheap here in Romania. they are super high in pectin. I buy lots and freeze the resulting juice and puree to be used later. But all apples are high in pectin and I generally just buy local ones or make use of gifts of apples people cannot use. This recipe is for the very sour small green apples:

Ingredients

Young small under ripe apples 3kg

For every kilo of apples, 1 litre of water (900ml water if regular apples)

How To

Quarter the apples and put in the pan, pips, cores, peel and all

Add the water. Dunk the apple pieces so they are covered. Sometimes I put an old plate on top to keep them submerged.

Boil until the fruit is cooked – 30-40 minutes.

Pass carefully through a jelly bag or a sieve lined with a tea towel. (the big ones that IKEA sell work particularly well over a washing up plastic bowl). Never ever ever squish your boiled fruit through the tea towel/ jelly bag unless you want cloudy jelly. Do not be tempted!

Reboil the residue with 1/3 the quantity of water

Repeat the process (I said that this was frugal!) This juice is your own natural pectin. Boiled with sugar it gels. Added to other lower pectin fruits it helps your jam set.

Pass the second residue through a mouli and keep the apple puree for chutney or adding to recipes like Blackberry & Apple jam.

APPLE JELLY

Now make the jelly which can be just pure gleaming apple jelly or can be embellished with vanilla, cinnamon or fresh mint for mint jelly. ive also made lemon verbena jelly with lemon verbena leaves, sage jelly and basil jelly over the years. What fascinates me is how different apples give a different colour of jelly – sometimes pale and golden and sometimes pinky tinged like crab apple jelly.

To the juice that you have now, you need to add sugar in this proportion:

75% sugar to juice, so if you have 1litre ie 1000ml of juice you need 750 g of sugar. So basically whatever quantity of juice you have, just multiply by 75% and thats your sugar quantity – easy peasy.

Warm up slowly until the sugar is dissolved.

Then whack up the temperature to a rolling boil until the setting point has been reached. see JAM MAKING RULES

Pot while hot into hot sterilised jars

Cream of Roast Red Pepper & Smoked Paprika Soup

Luscious smoky and sweet

I love roast red peppers and their smoky sweet flavour in all their guises and this soup takes them to a sophisticated new height. Roasting red peppers of course accentuates their flavour and although skinning and de seeding them is a bid fiddly I think the results are so worthwhile it is one of those steps really worth doing. Smoked paprika adds yet more smokiness and depth – worth a shopping trip to la Boqueria for.

Ingredients – serves 8 generously and some to freeze

20 quite fat sweet peppers (they do shrink down to nothing)
1 large chopped onion (red or white) and some olive oil to fry them in lightly
2 or three cloves of garlic
1.5 litres stock (I like chicken but a vegetable one is fine and you will not be judged for using ready made)
500 ml double cream (thats “heavy cream” in ‘Merica or “smantana dulce” in Romania)
3 teaspoons sweet smoked paprika – I like the sweet one not the hot one in this recipe
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Gadgets & Gizmos

A stick blender or blender, Fairly large saucepan, Baking tray

Plan Ahead

Roast the peppers and skin them ahead of time, freeze them and have them handy for recipes like this.

How To

Bake the red peppers at 180C on baking trays lined with aluminium foil or baking paper until they blacken. This is what gives the smoky taste. They really do need to look a bit cremated – fear not!

To remove the skins of the peppers place them in a large plastic freezer bag when still warm (this helps the skins loosen from the pepper flesh). Strip of the skins and remove the seeds. It’s a fairly messy process and depending on how seedy your peppers are you may need to hold them under running water. You should end up with pieces of red pepper flesh. Personally I prefer to have a few seeds in and not use running water because this keeps all the flavour concentrated in.

Cut the and onion into rough cubes. Finely chop the garlic. Fry gently in a little oil until the onion is just cooked (5-8 minutes) but not browned and it remains translucent. Add the smoked paprika. You want a bright coloured soup not a muddy brown colour here. Add the red pepper flesh, the bay leaves and and the stock. Simmer for 10-20 minutes until all the flavours have mixed and the soup is very hot.

Remove the bay leaves. Really! Blitzed bay leaves are bitter and horrible! Blitz the soup until it’s a thin puree like consistency. Now add the cream – here I had some really good local sweet cream I had found.

Now heat again very gently until hot. If this soup splits (the peppers might be a tad acidic but the roasting should take care of that) then add 1 teaspoon of cornflour thinned in 2 tablespoons of milk.

Serve with smoked paprika sprinkled on top or chives or a generous amount of chopped parsley. I also like it topped with (vegans look away) crispy smoked bacon or chorizo. Add your favourite bread and a glass of hearty red wine. Enjoy!

Roast Tomato, Walnut & Lemon Pesto

so much more than just pesto that its almost insulting! Use this to spread on toast, coat pasta, make crusts on meat, use as a dip, make elegant canapes liven up soups, make chunky toasted sandwiches with this and goats cheese and much more.

My original recipe for this started I think based on a Greek recipe (hence the cinnamon) and had a bit of eastern Mediterranean influence (might have been a Claudia Roden or Anissa Helou thing) but anyhow its been a dinner party canape staple of mine forever. Here is my basic recipe and the quantities are for guidance only, the key thing here is to make it how you like it:

Ingredients

A jar of sun dried tomatoes oil and all or a jar of home bottled roast tomatoes in which case no need to add any extra tomato puree or water which you may need to add if you are using jarred sun dried tomatoes

A big handful possibly two of walnuts (probably a cup)

half a preserved lemon pulp and all (I like mine lemony – if you are not sure start with a quarter)

chilli (I am sensitive so I dont add a huge amount…if you prefer a dip more on the muhamara side of things…spice it up)

If you are using home bottle tomatoes you might want to add a glug more of olive oil

2 to three and possibly four cloves of garlic. I like quite a lot

salt pepper and absolutely do not omit the cinnamon. half to one teaspoon.

How To

Blitz it up in a food blender. I like to keep mine with a bit of texture – think of the difference between crunchy and smooth peanut butter.

Thats it.

Always have some in the fridge. Always.