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A morning in the kitchen
Aug. 12th, 2018 11:46 amYesterday was pleasant and cool, with a good breeze, so I spent a couple of hours in the early evening outside harvesting nettles, and picking red and black currants (only one yoghurt bucket of each). There were lots of new nettles growing in on the path David has mowed to the black currant patch (does one still call it a “patch” of berry bushes when there are so many of them?), so it was a good time to harvest more. I put the nettles into the dehydrator last night before bed, and the red currants into the freezer, since I have already dried a couple of batches of red currants this summer.
The red currants are harder to find, since they grow here and there around the property, often among a tangle of other bushes or young trees. Each time I go out looking for them I pick all I find till the yoghurt bucket is full and call it good, but the next time I go out I spot other bushes I didn’t see the time before. Perhaps I now have all of this year’s red currants from our property, perhaps not. I think that I have checked all of the spots in which I usually find them.
When I woke up this morning the nettles were dry, bringing the first of this year’s jars to half full of dried nettles (it would be a bit more, but, of course, I keep cooking with them as it is faster to take from the jar than to go harvest more while in the middle of cooking). I want at least two tall glass jars full of dried nettles before snow flies, and three would be better (I toss them into most of what I cook, because I love them). Therefore I considered just going out to harvest more nettles for drying straight away. However, I am nearly out of last year’s dried black currants (there is enough left for the next batch of muesli I mix), so I decided to dry the ones I picked yesterday.
Black currants, however, aren’t as easy to dry as softer berries, and I have found that I get the best results if I abuse them first. So I set some water on to boil, and when it was boiling well I dropped in the berries and set the timer. 1.5 minutes later the berries were floating to the top with the circulation of the water, and I decided that was long enough, so I drained the berries (over a large metal bowl to save the cooking water, of course), put a little cold water into another bowl, and submerged the colander full of berries into that water briefly. I then combined the now-pink cooling water with the very pink cooking water and set them aside to cool while I spread the still warm berries onto the the trays of the dehydrator. One yoghurt bucket is only enough to partially fill two trays of the rack, so I could have picked three buckets worth. However, while most of the black currants are ripe, they are not *all* ripe yet, so I wasn’t motivated to pick more than the one bucket yesterday.
After cleaning up the berry cleaning mess I remembered that we still had that bag of frozen blueberries that my friend Marcus had given us when he moved to Ireland—I have no idea how long they had been in his freezer, but they had long since frozen together into a very solid mass, so can’t really be eaten as just frozen berries. Therefore I put it into a pot with half a litre of water (there was at least a litre of berries in that bag—it is hard to be certain, since it was not only in a solid mass, it was an odd enough shape as to not really fit into my big glass measuring bowl. Then I added 1 dl of sugar and turned on the heat.
While the berries were thawing and cooking I made a beetloaf. Beetloaf is one of my favourite foods to have on hand in the freezer for quick meals, as it travels well. I pretty much never do them the same way twice, but I took notes this time. The last time I posted about beetloaf I didn’t include any measurements (and it was only posted on FB in the comments of a friend's request for vegetarian ideas of things to cook. However, there may well be different recipes for this in some of my older posts), so I will share today’s version here:
( Beetloaf )
I cut a slice to taste it at a half an hour, and it was really yummy, but I thought it could use a little longer, so I turned off the oven and went to the computer.
While the beetloaf was baking I had time to clean up the mess, take out the compost and transfer the blueberry jam (which had cooked down enough by then) into a jar. I also set a bread sponge somewhere in there, so I may go back to the kitchen and turn that into bread dough later today. Or perhaps tomorrow.
The red currants are harder to find, since they grow here and there around the property, often among a tangle of other bushes or young trees. Each time I go out looking for them I pick all I find till the yoghurt bucket is full and call it good, but the next time I go out I spot other bushes I didn’t see the time before. Perhaps I now have all of this year’s red currants from our property, perhaps not. I think that I have checked all of the spots in which I usually find them.
When I woke up this morning the nettles were dry, bringing the first of this year’s jars to half full of dried nettles (it would be a bit more, but, of course, I keep cooking with them as it is faster to take from the jar than to go harvest more while in the middle of cooking). I want at least two tall glass jars full of dried nettles before snow flies, and three would be better (I toss them into most of what I cook, because I love them). Therefore I considered just going out to harvest more nettles for drying straight away. However, I am nearly out of last year’s dried black currants (there is enough left for the next batch of muesli I mix), so I decided to dry the ones I picked yesterday.
Black currants, however, aren’t as easy to dry as softer berries, and I have found that I get the best results if I abuse them first. So I set some water on to boil, and when it was boiling well I dropped in the berries and set the timer. 1.5 minutes later the berries were floating to the top with the circulation of the water, and I decided that was long enough, so I drained the berries (over a large metal bowl to save the cooking water, of course), put a little cold water into another bowl, and submerged the colander full of berries into that water briefly. I then combined the now-pink cooling water with the very pink cooking water and set them aside to cool while I spread the still warm berries onto the the trays of the dehydrator. One yoghurt bucket is only enough to partially fill two trays of the rack, so I could have picked three buckets worth. However, while most of the black currants are ripe, they are not *all* ripe yet, so I wasn’t motivated to pick more than the one bucket yesterday.
After cleaning up the berry cleaning mess I remembered that we still had that bag of frozen blueberries that my friend Marcus had given us when he moved to Ireland—I have no idea how long they had been in his freezer, but they had long since frozen together into a very solid mass, so can’t really be eaten as just frozen berries. Therefore I put it into a pot with half a litre of water (there was at least a litre of berries in that bag—it is hard to be certain, since it was not only in a solid mass, it was an odd enough shape as to not really fit into my big glass measuring bowl. Then I added 1 dl of sugar and turned on the heat.
While the berries were thawing and cooking I made a beetloaf. Beetloaf is one of my favourite foods to have on hand in the freezer for quick meals, as it travels well. I pretty much never do them the same way twice, but I took notes this time. The last time I posted about beetloaf I didn’t include any measurements (and it was only posted on FB in the comments of a friend's request for vegetarian ideas of things to cook. However, there may well be different recipes for this in some of my older posts), so I will share today’s version here:
( Beetloaf )I cut a slice to taste it at a half an hour, and it was really yummy, but I thought it could use a little longer, so I turned off the oven and went to the computer.
While the beetloaf was baking I had time to clean up the mess, take out the compost and transfer the blueberry jam (which had cooked down enough by then) into a jar. I also set a bread sponge somewhere in there, so I may go back to the kitchen and turn that into bread dough later today. Or perhaps tomorrow.
