Sun Dried Tomatoes

It's a nice sunny day for a change so I've decided to construct a solar dehydrator.

I'm awful at DIY so I'll be drawing on a childhood of Blue Peter and Art Attack. My materials are a cardboard box, some muslin, cling film, a large bowl and plenty of Sellotape.

I start by cutting off the wings of the box, then half way down one of the sides and cutting a slope to face into the sun.

I need ventilation to remove the moisture but I hate insects, so I've use the off cut wings, cut 2 squares, cut holes in the squares and stuck some muslin to them and sealed all round with Sellotape.

Then I cut 2 holes in the sides of the box to stick my vent covers over.

Next, I stretched muslin tightly over the bowl and secured with string.

I stuck the vent covers go on the sides and the bowl goes inside.

Now for the food bit. I used 5 tomatoes that had been ripening on my windowsill for a couple of weeks. I find that shop bought tomatoes are generally not worth eating until they've had a week at least of sun ripening. I cut them into quarters, skewered them, arranged them on top of the bowl and seasoned with a couple of pinches of light brown sugar, 2 or 3 generous pinches of garlic salt, a little pepper and fresh chopped basil.

I stuck a sheet of foil to the back of the dehydrator to reflect as much sun in as possible and dehydrator Mk.I was complete!

Finally, I stretched cling film over the top, sealed carefully all round with Sellotape and placed it outside in the middle of the garden, turning a couple of times to directly face the sun.

After about 6 hours the sun was getting low, the temperatures beginning to drop and the effectiveness of the sun was wearing off so I brought them in. But they certainly looked the business!

I tried a basil bud I had placed at the front. It was completely crispy, perfectly dried and hot with flavour. The tomatoes were still a little juicy though so I gave them another 2 and a half hours in the oven on a dehydrate setting. They didn't look massively different after that to be honest.

They did taste amazing though. I jarred them in olive oil with a little rapeseed oil.

A few things to improve on for Mk.II:
More foil
Get them outside earlier
Make a tray rather than use the bowl (I was in a rush)

Parsnip Mash

In an effort to be a) more healthy, b) more organised and c) make my sausages and mash more interesting I've been making my own parsnip mash in advance and freezing it. The day I fancy sausage and mash for dinner I drag the sausages and ready made mash out in the morning and simply reheat the mash while the sausages are baking later. Parsnip is great with pork, it makes perfect sense really!

Quite simply you could boil parsnips, mash them and throw in some butter and garlic, but I find that alone can be a little dull and disappointing. Besides, I'd rather not add butter if I can avoid it.

Use nice big monster parsnips for this job, less peeling and bigger evenly sized chunks for mashing. I do peel, chop and boil half the parsnips...

... but the others I like to bake. I stab them several times all the way round, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with smoked sea salt and fresh ground black pepper and then wrap them up in foil and place them in the middle of an oven at 180degC for about 40 mins to an hour.

The parsnips when they come out need to be tender enough to mash obviously. They should be a golden colour rather than white like your boiled ones and will have sweet caramelised brown juices in the foil tray that need to be added to your mash.

Chop down the middle lengthways and leave to cool. The skins peel easily off and the parsnips can be mashed in with the boiled ones.

Perfect with a good pork sausage, some peas and a spot of gravy. A great winter warmer meal.

Pickled Beetroot

Not all the recipes I post up on the blog are tried and tested. I have absolutely no idea how these will turn out, but I thought it might be fun to try and everyone can have a good laugh at me and point out the many obvious flaws in my method (chopping them up before roasting, leaving the skins on, roasting with the honey rather than adding it after).

Still, here goes... I washed the beetroot thoroughly, topped and tailed them and chopped them up. Then roasted at about 180degC, drizzled with honey and sprayed with a little oil for about 40 minutes. They were tender and tasty for the most part but still had a bit of bite in the middle.

Whilst they were in I made up a light brine solution and allowed it to cool. A 5 percent brine is recommended, so for 1 litre of water you would dissolve 50g of kosher salt (or in my case 500ml of water and 25g salt). This is strong enough to preserve the veg and prevent the forming of unwanted bacteria, but allow the lactobacillus to grow and slightly sour the beetroot.

I placed all my beetroot into a jar and made up a quick on the spot mix of herbs:
1 tsp Dried Rosemary
1 tsp Dried Thyme
1 tsp Minced Garlic
1 and a half tsp Toasted Peppercorns

I washed out my roasting pan juices with the brine and poured it over the beetroot in stages to try and get as much air out from between the beetroot as possible. Finally, when full, I covered the jar with some cling film and sealed the lid.

In a couple of weeks I'll try one of the beetroot and check the sourness and flavour. If it all looks good and my plan has worked then I'll pour out the brine, boil it to halt the fermenting, cool it and pour it back in then leave it for about 2 months before they're ready to eat.

Pickled Shallots

Following the current theme I’m working along of not doing anything too massive until our new kitchen is ready I though a bit of pickling might be a fun project to embark on. This way the fruits of my labours should be just about ready to enjoy by the time we move in.

I’ve gone for beetroot and onions (well, shallots). Shallots because they’re a classic and beetroot because I love it! So for today I’ll start with the shallots which I’m going to pickle in a classic vinegar, spice and sugar method. However, rather than using malt vinegar alone I’m going for a 50 50 mix of cider and malt, partly because I’m a big cider vinegar fan and partly because cider vinegar is something I should be able to produce myself in the near future and this very much appeals to my self sufficient side.

To get started I topped, tailed and peeled my shallots and left them in a bowl with salt sprinkled over in the fridge for 12 hours. This should lift some of the outer skins a little and allow the vinegar to penetrate.

For the pickling spice I have used: 1 tbsp Mustard Seeds
1 tbsp Black Peppercorns
1 tbsp Cloves
1 tbsp Coriander Seeds
1 tbsp Juniper Berries
1 tbsp of Dried Chilli Flakes
Half a tbsp Ground Mace
Half a tbsp Ground Ginger
1 Cinnamon Stick
12 Bay Leaves

I lightly toasted the coriander, mustard and peppercorns and gently cracked them under a plate before adding them to the rest of the spice mix. This should make enough spice mix for my 2 recipes. I placed a little of the spice mix in the bottom of a sterile jar, added half the shallots, sprinkled more spice mix over the top, added the rest of the shallots and sprinkled again more spice mix on. I threw in a couple of pinches of the salt that the onions had been sat in and any juice that had been extracted in the salting.

Finally, I mixed a teaspoon of caster sugar up with my vinegars and poured them over the top in stages, tapping and shaking the jar about to get as many air pockets out as possible. I filled the jar right to the top and carefully laid a cover of cling film in there as well as a security measure in case the seal on the jar fails.

Looking forward to trying these in about 2 months time when we’ll be moved into our new house!

Return to the Sauerkraut

I've been sort of poking and prodding and squeezing the sauerkraut everyday for a week now and it's frothing slightly signifying that the fermenting has been successful. So I recon it's time to try some.

It certainly smells the part, not unpleasant, but sort of spicy. I scooped some out onto a plate for a closer look.

Beautiful! It's preserved and fermented nicely. I tried some and it certainly tastes the part too. The peppercorns and juniper berries really transformed the flavour, the cinnamon carried throughout and the caraway seeds forced their way through and lingered afterwards. I was really pleased with the seasoning, but let's be clear, the predominant flavour is a briney one. The cabbage had kept it's crunch too, it tasted really fresh.

The juice came out a really dark and intense colour.

Again the flavour was, well, brine really. There were some other flavours in there though and I reckon mixing that with some other juice might make it quite drinkable. I definitely don't plan on wasting it.

So will I make it again? Yeah! It took virtually no effort and having read all the research I did on it's health benefits I'd almost feel guilty not to!

Sauerkraut

Only a very quick one this evening, it is a school night after all.

I read about how easy and cheap it was to make sauerkraut and had to give it a try.

Ingredients

About 2kg of cabbage

About 3 tablespoons of kosher salt

Spices of your choice

I thought it might be fun to go for a mixture of white and red cabbage to hopefully turn out a pretty pink sauerkraut. As I'm a first timer I haven't been too adventurous with my spices. I opted for 25 juniper berries, some smoked black peppercorns, about a teaspoon and a half of caraway seeds, about a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a bit of garlic. Had I had mustard seeds to hand I would have added them and reduced the pepper.

I lightly toasted the peppercorns, chopped up the garlic very fine and combined all the spices.

I shredded and mixed all the cabbage and sterilised the vessel I'm using to ferment in. I'm actually using a food grade plastic small brewing bucket.

Now the fun part...

Pack a layer of cabbage into the bottom of the bucket and ram it in tight with your fist. Now sprinkle some salt over the top and add a bit of the spice mix. Put in another layer of cabbage and ram it in again. Keep layering until you've used up all your salt and spice and cabbage.

The plan is the salt will draw the water out of the cabbage (through osmosis) to make it's own pickling brine, then the bacteria on the cabbage will ferment it.

I placed a sterilised plate on top and a jar of water to weigh it down. I want to keep all the cabbage under the surface of the brine. I stretched some cling film over the top just to stop any creepy crawlies finding their way in.

Now to just leave it in a quiet corner and let it do it's thing! The water should have been drawn out of the cabbage after about 24 hours so I'll check back then.

After 24 hours the Level of the brine still hasn't quite made it over the top of the level of the cabbage.

So I've topped it up with a rather strong brine solution and we'll see how that gets on.

To be returned to in about a month to see if my super healthy sauerkraut will be added to my list of epic successes or my list of heroic failures...