Sticky crabapple jelly

These were very tiny, somewhat unusual crabapples (I'm pretty sure they were crabapples) that I collected with M from outside BU.

1 large yoghurt pot full of tiny red crabapples, washed and stalks removed
water
sugar (175g)

Wash the crabapples, put in a pan and cover with water. Simmer for ~30 min, until they are softened and collapsing. Put into a jelly bag, string up and let drip into a clean pan overnight. If you want it to be clear you should not squeeze the bag. When ready, measure the juice (I had 250ml) and add seven parts sugar for ten parts juice (ie approx 175 ml or 175g). Bring to the boil and simmer until setting point is reached, then transfer to sterilised jar(s) and allow to cool before labelling.


I wasn't paying enough attention and accidentally went beyond setting point, tried to rescue it by adding boiling water, think it is OK but very dark in colour and rather sticky! Better not to work with such small quantities really I guess. The stuff has a very sharp, interesting sweet-sourness to it.

Edit: M stopped by with more apples yesterday and we opened the jar to try it. He was loving it and I have to agree it's quite good. Reminiscent of pomegranate molasses, he said, I think it's true.

Apple, kohlrabi, beetroot, leaves and seeds

A daydream of a salad: we had lots of salad greens, but the apple, beetroot and anise were begging to play together. Kohlrabi, onion, poppy and pumpkin seeds jumped into the mix...

2 small apples, peeled and cored
1/4 of a giant kohlrabi, peeled
1 small beetroot (I used candy striped but any would be fine), peeled
juice of 1/2 lemon
~3 handfuls of salad leaves (any)
~1 tbsp poppy seeds
~2 tsp anise seeds
1-2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
~1/2 tbsp finely chopped white onion
2 tsp white miso
1 tsp honey
1 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
1-2 tbsp olive oil
black pepper

Cut the apple, kohlrabi and beetroot into matchsticks. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice over the apple to stop it going brown. Wash the salad leaves and put them in a serving bowl. Add the apple, kohlrabi, beetroot and seeds. In a separate, small bowl, mix the chopped onion with the rest of the lemon juice, miso, honey, vinegar and olive oil, beat together and taste for seasoning. When ready to eat, pour the dressing over the assembled salad and mix well.


And this turned out delicious. Really pretty: colourful beetroot, shards of apple and kohlrabi, speckles of seeds. Just enough sweetness, loads of textures and crunch. The anise, apple, beet and greens go great together, with the pumpkin and poppy seeds providing an earthiness to counteract the sweet. Love how exciting salads can be, whatever the weather (yesterday super windy and below zero).

Moghrabieh with turmeric, cumin and mustard oil

A quick starch to go with the lion's mane turned out good:

1 cup moghrabieh (massive lebanese couscous)
2 cups water
~2 tsp veg bouillon powder
1-2 tsp cumin seeds
~2 tsp mustard oil
1-2 tsp turmeric
1 bay leaf

Put all the ingredients in a pan together, cover and bring to the boil. Simmer until the moghrabieh is tender and all the liquid is absorbed.


The first time I cooked moghrabieh I wasn't sure about the texture / if I had cooked it right. Now I am into it - it is wonderfully stodgy, almost a little bit chewy - perfect filling warmth for cold days, especially when hotted up with cumin, turmeric and mustard oil.

Lion's mane mushroom

I went over to Egleston Square Farmer's Market at the weekend - I hadn't been there since the Winter version started again, they were having a cranberry slam, and I was curious about the mushroom farm our friends A+B were sharing a stall with (travelling in from Western Mass). A+B were not there this time, but mushrooms were. I bought some Lion's Mane (Hericium erinaceus) - a mushroom I had neither seen nor eaten before. It looks a bit like a hedgehog mushroom, with really long, shaggy teeth and no discernable cap. Off-white. Looks fancy!

I sliced the Lion's Mane and fried it in olive oil, with finely sliced onion, chopped garlic and thyme leaves, finished with a little white wine and seasoning. It had a slightly chewy texture and mild taste. It was fine, but not going on my top mushrooms list. I wonder if wild mushrooms automatically taste more interesting than cultivated?

National Trust Biscuits

My Mum used to make these - they were a regular request from my sisters and me - we loved them. I guess she got the recipe from the National Trust somehow or other: they were always National Trust biscuits, never any other or more descriptive name. I started making them myself as a teenager - they were easy enough for me to manage with limited skills, and always went down well... Despite my not knowing what a 'cup' measure was - I'd just pick a cup or mug from the cupboard and use that, so every time I made them they were different, depending on the cup I'd chosen. I still need to figure out my favourite interpretation of the 'cup' volume - sometimes they were slightly bendy and chewy when cooled; sometimes they'd spread out massively and all run into one another. The version I made yesterday (because I felt like it, because I wanted biscuits for journal club, because they seemed seasonal with all that warming ginger and treacle) came out fairly crispy and didn't spread that much - perhaps not my favourite - this recipe may be updated...

Mix in a bowl:
1 cup SR flour (1 cup plain flour plus 2 tsp baking powder)
1 cup sugar
1 cup oats
1 tsp ground ginger

Heat in a pan:
4 oz margarine (or coconut oil)*
1/2 tbsp black treacle (or molasses)

Mix in a mug:
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tbsp boiling water.

Heat oven to 300F / 150C. Grease a couple of baking sheets. Add the contents of the pan and the mug together to the bowl and mix until combined into a dough. Roll into balls, flatten slightly and space out on the baking sheets. Bake for 10-15 min, until golden brown and slightly spread. Let cool for 10 min or so on the baking sheet before transferring to a rack to finish cooling (they will be floppy when you first take them out; you want to transfer them at the sweet spot when they are slightly bendy and not completely hardened and crisp yet).

*tried using 3 oz sunflower oil, felt like would need a bit more?

Midwestern collard greens

I'd never felt much love for collards. Compared with most of their Brassica relatives, they just seemed way less exciting in every way. Some came in the CSA last week. I remembered G saying that N made excellent collard greens, so when I saw him at Happy Hour on Friday I asked about them. He divulged his secret recipe: boil them for seven minutes then saute with garlic (he then segwayed into the best things about Michigan (where he comes from)). Makes sense - collards are tougher than your average green. So S+I thought we'd give them another chance. Turns out it's true: N does make excellent collard greens - the seven minutes' boiling was enough to make then incredibly tender without making them taste or look overcooked. We ate them all.

Unsweetened apple butter

I came across this method at some point, and it got me thinking about trying to make jam or spread without adding sugar: just using the sugar already present in the fruit. I went up a tree with M on Saturday and picked more apples. Small, yellowish-green ones with a pinkish blush on some; M described them as having a rosewater / lychee flavour and I had to agree when I tasted them. So then I had fruit to experiment with. I peeled and cored the apples and cut them into chunks, then blended them til smooth (adding a splash of pineapple juice to get the blender started)*. Then I transferred the whole lot into a saucepan and simmered, uncovered, for 6-7 hours. I occasionally added a splash more pineapple juice if I thought it looked like it was sticking. Probably added about 200 ml pineapple juice all told. It reduced massively (~ 2 full blenders of apple chunks became ~400 ml of thick apple stuff); took on a brownish colour and a slightly caramelised taste. I turned it off when it was really thick and starting to stick a lot. I decided to call it apple butter - it seemed more like apple butter than anything else. It's quite sweet - you're definitely not wondering where the sugar is.

My original thought had been just to extract the juice and reduce that, with the aim of making something more like a fruit molasses - I love all the fruit molasses I've tried (date, pomegranate, mulberry, carob, grape...). But I couldn't bring myself to chuck out so much of the apples so decided to liquidise and then reduce all the flesh and see what happened. I wonder if doing this with grapes or plums or similar would give something stickier and more like a molasses - apples contain a lot of fibre.

But still, this apple-y experiment is pretty tasty.

*Note: I think I might have got smoother results if I'd liquidised after cooking the apples to soften them instead of doing it before cooking.