Cardamon & Star Anise Preserved Pears

delicately spiced these store cupboard gems will lead you on all kinds of culinary journeys….

3 Kilos of hard pears (must be hard)
2 lemons – juiced (do save the zest for other things – freeze it)
450g sugar
2 litres water
2 – 4 star anise
4 – 6 cardamom pods
2 sticks cinnamon
2 bay leaves

gadgets & gizmos

One very large jar or several smaller jars. I often make them “serving size” so think about your family and choose jars that will take say 2 or 4 or 6 half pears as a half pear is a good serving guide.

How To

Acidulate a bowl of water with the juice of the lemons. Dont forget this step as this keeps the pears a beautiful bright colour by halting the oxidation process. Plus we will recycle this lemony water into the syrup!
Peel, core, and quarter the pears. This is tedious and as the pears are hard they can be a tad difficult to peel. Add them to the acidulated water as soon as you peel and core a portion of pear.
In a large saucepan add the sugar, acidulated water, and spices. Bring to a boil quite fast because the pear pieces can only sit around so long outside the lemon bath. As soon as a little vapour rises from the syrup plunge the pears into the syrup. Let come to a boil again, cook for 5 minutes.
Pack the jars with the pears. This is where you can indulge your inner pear packing nerd and stack them up neatly. In fact the bigger the jars the easier this is. I insert just one or two star anise and cardamon pods inside. Pears have a subtle flavour and we dont want to overwhelm them.

Pour the remaining syrup over the pears to cover, leaving a little space approx 1cm of headroom from the tops of the jars. Put on the lids.
Now water bath them and this is important. If you do not do this they may ferment and they certainly will not keep at room temperature. Either use a bain marie or better for tall jars, your biggest deepest saucepan. Boil in water for 20 minutes.

Leave for a few days to let the syrup infuse.

Ideas and Improvs

Use in crumbles, in frangipane tarts, with a vanilla tart, to acompany blue cheese or just served with a delicious home made custard laced with brandy in winter to warm you up!

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

Roast tomato sauce

Its fast and faster still if made with home bottled roast tomatoes

its easy, its intense

it covers all tomato sauce bases.

Simmer meatballs in it, layer a dish of melanzane parmigiana, serve plain with home made pasta and freshly grated parmesan, pour over fried eggs, dribble across sausages and green lentils, make your best pizza ever and so on and so on. You cant have enough good tomato sauce on hand in the kitchen. There are as many different types of tomato sauce as there are cooks so here is my “go to” sauce that is fool proof when you are confronted with less than inspiring fruit and stunning when made with summery full flavour specimens.

If you want a smooth sauce (personally a bit prissy I think and smacks of baby food) then either peel and seed your tomatoes first or pass the mixture through a “mouli” (food mill). For everyday home cooking there really is no need and besides the seeds and skin is where a lot of the goodness lies.

Ingredients

4 cloves garlic

1 onion

1 kg of tomatoes or a jar of the home bottled tomatoes

Some alcohol such as left over red wine (in the rare case this might occur) or better martini, approx 300ml

1 lemon with the skin peeled in strips, juice of the lemon

Some Worcestershire sauce (optional but I like it)

How To

Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally. Oil a baking sheet that you have covered with aluminium foil (reduce washing up). Don’t bother to skin the onion or garlic. Throw the garlic, tomatoes and onion on the sheet and roast in the oven for approximately 1 hour – until the tomatoes look well cooked and start to caramelize a bit. You want the little brown caramelly bits.

If you have bottled these beauties…you just fast forward all the way here..and fry some onions and garlic in a sauce pan and add your tomatoes from the jar (do discard the rosemary as it will be bitter but the thyme is fine)

At this stage the seasoning is up to you and the final dish you are using the sauce for. I sometimes add thyme, oregano or Worcestershire sauce depending on the dish and lets be honest depending on what is in the kitchen. Let the mixture boil and then cook on a low low heat for at least 20 minutes. The sauce deepens in flavour if you can leave it an hour. Take out the bay leaves and lemon peel. Bitter blitzed up bay leaves are really disgusting. You have been warned! Blitz it all up with your blender of choice (I use the stick blender) and you are set to go.

Variations: add the onion raw at the end when you blitz for a sauce with a bit of kick “gazpacho style”. The onion is blitzed in raw and gives not only great flavor but the maximum power of the almighty onion! Both onions and garlic are cholesterol busters so don’t be shy. Onions are high in vitamin C, B6, biotin, chromium, calcium and dietary fiber and also contain good amounts of folic acid and vitamin B1 and K.