Tasty Herbalist

soft fruit overload

I'm mostly over the cold through a combination of everything below but in the midst of it all I got given about 4kg of plums (and kilo's of apples) and my tomato plants suddenly produced a glut of ripe red tomatoes. Soft fruits do not wait out colds. Soft fruits sit around and rot. So I got bottling.

A poor, poor picture but from left to right I have plum mincemeat, plum & apple chutney and roasted tomato ketchup. They are all from this book, again. Really, I can't recommend it enough. I have to say though that I did make fairly heavy changes to the chutney and the ketchup mainly to do with my own tastes and what I had in the house. They are all winners. Really delicious. Here's a quick breakdown of them all:

The mincemeat is not suet laden like most and contains predominately fresh fruits rather than the usual dried. It's sweet but the sourness of the plums also comes through. I'll keep this until just before Christmas and then make tarts or perhaps sweet pasties, I'm not sure yet.

The chutney is divine. I've never liked chutneys which are a mixture of sultanas, raisins and currants, why put so many similar fruits in it? I changed it for a mix of raisins, apricots and prunes. So much nicer. Raisins must be picked over to remove stems as one stem ruins it all for me. Likewise the apples in it have to have all the core removed. Finding a bit of the hard core is like finding a toenail. Yuck! Again, sweet but sour and it goes with...everything. We had it with beans on toast the other day and with potato wedges another. I've even put it in with hummus sandwiches.

The roasted tomato ketchup...wow! I wish I had even more tomatoes or had eaten fewer in salads. I added  caramelised onions to the recipe, used some different spices, used rice vinegar and added in less sugar. I plan to make some burgers later in the week and some homemade rolls and I'll serve them up with some of the ketchup and potato wedges. Can't wait.

I also whipped up a batch of biscuits (or cookies depending on what mood I'm in). Oatmeal, raisin, walnut and chocolate chip all in one biscuit. So delicious it almost blew my head off. Seriously. They are very loosely based on a recipe from How it all vegan...although I added in some oats and altered the amounts so I had raisins, walnuts and chocolate chips rather than just chips. I'll play around with the type of fats i use next time as I want to try and make them even crisper. Sometimes I like a chewy biscuit but most of the time I want it crumbly and crunchy. ooh! I might add in some grated orange rind next time instead of the vanilla. It makes about 2 dozen so I've had to freeze them to stop us eating them all. Problem is they can be eaten straight out the freezer so it's not helped much.

A trifling cold

Laying low. sleeping. Drinking. Not doing much else. Eating lots of ginger and garlic and fruit. My body wants fruit...apples and plums mostly so at least its wants are seasonal. Drinking my elderberry cordial which is spicy with cinnamon and cloves and mixing it with fresh lemon juice and a few shavings of ginger. I'll most likely make soup. Something spicy and sour to blast away the mucus with a handful of greens thrown in. Perhaps I'll have pasta with a raw 'sauce' made from finely chopped garlic, little bit of chilli, lemon zest and juice and parsley. Mix it all up with a little olive oil and toss in the hot pasta. All good things for shortening  colds. Then perhaps I'll gently stew up some plums with a couple of their cracked kernals, some cinnamon and some cloves and have them hot with custard for the ultimate autumn comfort food.

...and suddenly it's the weekend.

What happened there? One day it's Monday and suddenly it's Sunday. I don't even think I can account for the week! There was:  torrential rain, a sunny morning, a running out cooking gas, two very blustery days, a trip to the beach and a venture into the big city but the rest of the time...drawing a great big blank. Oh, and it's definitely autumn now.

The big horse chestnut out the front of the house is always the first to turn and reminds me to brace myself for imminent barren trees. The days have also got noticeably shorter. I always feel that it takes months to add an hour on the day but only a couple of weeks to remove it. Perhaps that's just me. However, don't get me wrong...it's not all bad and to prove it here's why:

• lots of wild foods and medicines to pick...brambles, hazelnuts, beechnuts, rosehips, hawthorns, elderberries and still some raspberries hidden in the hedgerows. Well, it is harvest time after all!

• The garden is prolific and I'm getting the best of both summer and autumn harvest. There are still tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, beans and peas but also parsnips, carrots, beetroot and kale. Plenty to make garden soups and stews from as well as fresh salads. No other time of year yields such a variety of foods.

• The colours. What was a sea of green is becoming a vibrant mixture of yellow, orange and red. I'm enjoying it now as soon everything will turn brown and then turn that monochrome winter colour where it feels like someone has been fiddling with the brightness, colour and contrast.

Random ramblings

(Crocosmia gone wild in the forest)

Just some random ramblings today before I forget to post about them.

• The bread is supposed to be kneaded in a special way according to the Bertinet book but I don't bother, I don't even knead it the normal way, I simply mix all the ingredients together in a food mixer (using a dough hook) and let it do all the work.

• I realise this is a very lazy approach but there are two reasons I don't hand knead. One, I'm now baking bread every two days so it has to be quick and easy otherwise it just wouldn't get done. Two, I have dry hands and flaky skin but when I hand knead my skin becomes soft and smooth, so where does it go?... 

• The wild rosehips are ready for picking round about me. You want them before they turn very red and start getting soft so I'll have to brave the gales tomorrow and get picking. 

• The hawthorn berries which grow in the hot sunny spots are also ready so I'll be picking them also.

• I must remember to take containers/bags and not do what I usually do and use dog poo bags. I always have them in my pocket but I'm fairly sure I disturbed some weekend drivers as I had gathered brambles and put them in a poo bag and then proceeded to eat them out of it while wandering along.

• I had made this deodorant a while back but it wasn't working for me mainly because it was too oily. I played around and have now created a great creamy deodorant using only shea butter, cornflour and bicarbonate of soda all whipped together in a food mixer. It's waxy rather than oily which I prefer and stops me from stinking...which is good. Only down side is shea butter has a strong smell. Very roughly it was about 100g shea butter and a tablespoon each of cornflour and bicarbonate of soda.

 

Breads and spread

The bread was a success. I used a recipe from the book Dough but sort of tweaked it here and there because it is beyond my abilities to follow a recipe religiously. I just can't do it especially if I see a way of improving it. You'd think the least I would do is follow  it diligently to start with, but no. C'est impossible! Anyhoo, all I did was use ciabatta flour instead of strong white and added in some olive oil. Oh, and I use dried yeast because it's easier to store long term and I always use less than it says on the tub. This stops the homemade bread smelling all yeasty and all it means is that the dough will take longer to rise. 

The texture of the bread is a little denser than shop bought wholemeal but I can live with that. It wasn't brick-like just not spongy like a cake  but then bread should be like bread and cake like cake. I'll try this recipe out a few more times before trying out both sweet and savoury variations. I'm thinking a herb, onion and walnut bread would be particularly good and for sweetness something with chopped apricots.

To go along with the bread I made up some miso, tahini and lemon spread :

It is such a savoury tasting spread which works particularly well with earthy flavours so it's good with wholemeal bread but also roast root vegetables (especially roast beetroot). There's no denying it's an unusual combination but nutritionally it is immense! Calcium and protein from the tahini, Vitamin C from the lemon and both digestive enzymes and immune boosting properties from the miso. Add that to the B vitamins and fibre in my wholemeal bread and a girl doesn't need much more...except perhaps some kale. Oh! That would be superb! Lightly stir fried kale on top of it all. 

Just so you know having experimented with various types of miso I now use the lightest one made from rice. I buy it by the kilo (unsurprisingly) at a huge Asian supermarket where it works out cheaper than buying it in a health food shop.