Green tomato jam

After researching several recipes on green tomato chutney, I decided to give up on this and moved on to my trusty Larousse Gastronomique. There I found a recipe for green tomato jam, which seemed simple enough to be worth trying out. All the chutneys seemed to contain a large amount of apples and also required cooking for several hours in vinegar and I don't feel prepared to depopulate the whole village where I live. So it had to be jam.

The recipe was very brief: follow the recipe for red tomato jam, but let the green tomatoes steep for 24 h in the sugar and use perserving sugar with added pectin. The recipe for the red tomato jam says to peel the tomatoes by digging out the stalk and plunging them into boiling water for 1 minute. Now I'd seen a variant on this in a film many years ago, where in addition to removing the stalk, they also cut a small cross at the bottom of each tomato, then poured boiling water over them, left them to stand for a bit and peeled them. This is what I've been doing since I saw that and which sort of works for ripe tomatoes, but not for unripe ones, I discovered when I tried it. So first lesson learnt, the water needs to continue to boil while the tomatoes are submerged in it.

Since scalding the tomatoes didn't loosen their skins, I had to peel them with an apple peeler, which took a significant part of the evening.

Then I diced them, weighed them and stired in the same weight of sugar. Regular sugar, because that's what I had. I thought I'd add the pectin later. I had 1091 g of tomatoes and added the same amount of water. Larousse Gastronomique said to add the juice of 2 lemons for each kilo of fruit. I squeezed the life of the one lemon I had and topped up with the remaining lemon juice I had in a bottle, my guess is that wasn't quite the amount of a full lemon, but I was a bit worried the jam would be too sharp, since I assumed that unripe tomatoes won't have as much sweetness as ripe ones.

24 hours later there was a lot of liquid in the pot, a lot more than seems reasonable for making jam. But never mind.

Before beginning to cook the jam, I dug out all the little jars I've saved over the years and placed in the oven, preheated to 125 °C. I also placed a saucepan half-filled with water on the hob and brought it to a rolling boil. There I put all the lids in and left for 10 minutes before taking out and setting aside to dry. I left the oven on with the jars.

I added 2 sachets of pectin to the pot, though the instructions implied that one sachet should be enough to set 1 kg of fruit. But what happens very often when you add a powder to a liquid? The powder turns to lumps. I tried to dissolve as much of the pectin as possible, smearing the larger lumps with the back of the spoon against the wall of the pot, but most I think remained in lumps. So lesson number two - mix the pectin and the sugar well before adding to the fruit.

And onto the hob and bring to the boil. I kept stirring until I remembered that you're not supposed to do that, then I left it to bubble away. A good thing I used my large pot because the mixture swelled to at least 4 times its original volume. I did skim the fine foam that formed around the edges as best I could and a hot tip is not to throw it away, it is very tasty and I had it on toast for breakfast the next day.

After about 10 minutes, I decided it was enough, so I turned off the heat and filled up 7 small jars. I put on the lids as tightly as I could and left them to cool down. My mum turns her jam jars upside down, which forces the air up to the bottom of the jars and helps create a vacuum. But there was a lot more liquid than fruit in this jam, I didn't want to risk things running over the work surface.

And lesson number three - drain away some of the liquid from the tomatoes before mixing in the sugar so as to end up with more fruit in the jam. I'll have to think of what I can do with that liquid, maybe freeze in an ice cube tray and use for flavouring.

I haven't tried this batch of jam yet, but I did have the foam I skimmed off on toast and frankly it wasn't bad at all. A bit strange since it did have the typical tomato flavour and I associate that with savoury food, but it was still nice.

I will get myself a brie and a camembert and see how this jam works with cheeses.

But I still have lots of unripe tomatoes to deal with, so I will make another batch and implement my three lessons.

Roasted green tomato soup

This year, my lovely niece Lou went a bit mad and planted a lot of seeds and a few weeks into her gardening, she ran out of space, so she very kindly gave me 2 tomato plants, which I promptly planted in the garden, since this year's potato crop didn't really happen. The tomato plants grew and grew and outgrew the supports I'd put in for them and kept growing. They also set a lot of fruit and I mean a lot. The variety is called Tigerella because the tomatoes are red with greenish stripes, so very pretty. Taste-wise, they aren't much different from the shop-bought stuff, but Lou had warned me about that.

After what seemed like a very long wait, the first reddish blush appeared and I started picking tomatoes, leaving them on the window sill for a couple of days to redden and soften. Very soon, I was struggling to keep up, so I blended 3 batches of 400 g and froze for cooking. Then I made my tomato sauce, but allowed it to boil down and become quite thick. This went into the freezer as well with the aim to have it ready for a pizza.

Now the autumn has arrived and it's getting cold and rainy, there are still loads of tomatoes left, but they aren't going red as fast, so I've started researching recipes for green tomatoes. I found this website which collates ten different recipes. I made two jars with pickled green tomatoes that were listed there, but I increased the amount of tomatoes to fill up the jars, since the original amount of 375 g barely made it to the middle. The liquid in the recipe was way too much, but it is fairly similar to the one for the royal pickle, so I'll used it to top up there when the turshiya vegetables are ready tomorrow. In fact, this method is very similar to the turshiya. Yes, I'm using this weekend, when Lundulph is away for a couple of days, to do some pickling and prepare all the pungent liquids, along with the annual clean of the oven.

However, there seems to be no end to the green tomatoes, the plants still look full of them and I must have picked at least 4 kg this weekend. I quite like tomato soup, so I searched for green tomato soup and came across this recipe, which seemed reasonable and I had all the ingredients. It didn't seem to have enough flavourings, so here are my tweaks to it.

Ingredients

1 kg green tomatoes
2 medium sized brown onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp sunflowerseed oil
vegeta (or salt), black pepper, Korean chilli flakes
5 dl water
3 Oxo cubes chicken stock
100 g baby spinach
1 dl fresh dill
1 dl fresh tarragon
½ dl fresh basil

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 220 °C.
2. Wash the tomatoes, quarter and remove the fibrous area around the stalk. Peel and cut the onions in 8 wedges. Peel and cut the garlic in smaller pieces.
3. Brush a roasting tin with the oil, add the tomatoes, onion and garlic and sprinkle with vegeta (salt), black pepper and Korean chilli flakes, then stir well to get all the vegetables coated in the oil.
4. Bake the vegetables for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through.
5. Bring the water to the boil in a deep casserole and break up the Oxo cubes and add to the water. Stir until they've dissolved fully.
6. Add the baby spinach and simmer for a few minutes until it wilts, then keep warm until the tomatoes are ready.
7. Prepare the dill, tarragon and basil by washing and removing the stalks.
8. When the tomatoes are soft, they are ready. Add to the casserole along with the fresh herbs, then blend with a handmixer until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.
9. If you want to turn it into a sauce, replace on the hob and simmer on low heat, stirring occasionally until it's reduced and thickened further.

When I tasted it after blending, I thought it was OK, but it felt like something was missing. I was wondering if I should blitz in a handful of cashew nuts, but decided to leave it as is. Lundulph also tasted it and thought it would make a very nice sauce for fish, especially cod, but possibly also salmon. So we'll have it as soup tonight, but I'll bake some salmon and see how that works as well. If there's any soup left after that, I will add some cashews and see how that changes things. So the overall conclusion is that this needs a bit more work, but has potential.

Ris à la Malta

This one's been on my list for a long time. It is the Swedish take on the Danish risalamande, which itself may have been inspired by a French rice dish. There are speculations on the Swedish name – it could be a mispronunciation of the "alamande" or it could be that the Swedish version contains orange, which in French cooking terms is referred to as "à la Malte" or "maltaise", at least accoding to Larousse Gastronomique. Regardless, it is a glorified rice pudding with exotic flavourings and whipped cream to make it very rich and luxurious.

Depressingly, searching for recipes didn't result in much and I forgot to look in my big Swedish cook book from the 1950s. I didn't like any of the few recipes that I did find, so I decided to make things up along the way, but the recipes did help me in the right direction.

The main recipe I used is from Larousse Gastronomique from about 25 years ago, the Swedish recipes didn't seem to use any sugar apart from the odd tablespoon of icing sugar in the whipped cream, really not enough to make it sweet enough for a dessert. The Swedish recipe either calls for decorating with oranges or using orange juice in the rice pudding. I didn't quite like the idea of this, so decided to use orange zest instead. Here is what I concocted.

Ingredients
10 portions

200 g pudding rice
5 dl water
2 pinches salt
1 l full milk
zest of one orange
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
⅓ tsp ground cinnamon
3 dl whipping cream
2½ tbsp icing sugar

Method

1. Put the milk, sugar, 1 pinch of salt, orange zest, vanilla sugar and cinnamon in a large saucepan and bring to the boil.
2. Boil the water in a kettle, then pour into a saucepan together with 1 pinch of salt and put on the hop to keep it boiling. Add the rice and cook for 2 minutes.
3. Drain from the water, then pour into the saucepan with the milk, turn the heat down to low, cover and let simmer for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Remove from the heat, cover the surface with cling film to prevent a skin forming and allow to cool down to room temperature. To speed things up you can place the saucepan in cold water in the sink.
5. Whip the cream together with the icing sugar to soft peaks. Stir through the rice pudding if it has set, then fold the whipped cream into it.
6. Serve with a topping of choice - fruit compote or jam, chopped nuts or biscuit crumbs.

This dessert must be at least at room temperature before folding in the whipped cream, otherwise the cream will just melt. It should be served immediately after folding the whipped cream, but if you make it a couple of days in advance, store in the fridge and fold in the whipped cream shortly before serving. I found some recipes that recommend adding butter to the rice pudding, but I think this is way too much.

I knew this would turn out well as soon as I took the rice pudding off the heat. The kitchen smelled of orange and cinnamon, almost like Christmas. But once I added the whipped cream, that really raised the bar, so luxuriant and rich. There was a small bell in the back of my mind that this probably is not healthy, but I chose to ignore it. The only thing is that I couldn't make it look good when I served it, so I didn't take a photo. But having thought about it a little, I think it would look pretty if shaped with ab ice cream scoop and decorated with something brightly coloured, like edible flowers. I think the others liked it too. As it's rice, it was very filling, so I recommend small portions, if eating after a larger meal.

Another 80th birthday cake

Today would have been my Dad's 80th birthday, had he not passed away fairly suddenly some four years ago. I still miss him and I mark his birthday every year, though not always with a cake.

We visited Madeira at the start of June this year, it would have been a family trip back in 2020 with my Mum, Dad and Sister Bip, had we not been hit by covid and had to cancel it. In the supermarket in the centre of Funchal I spotted two cakes that looked very interesting and different from what I've seen before, so I quickly snapped a photo of each and decided to make the first one to mark my Dad's 80th. It is called Bolo de Bolacha and is a Portuguese version of a biscuit cake. I found an English language recipe here, but decided not to make the butter cream, that's way too much on one cake.

Instead I decided to make something lighter like a no-bake cheesecake filling, preferably with bilberries and I picked this one.

Ingredients

1 unwaxed lemon
300 g frozen bilberries
130 g granulated sugar
350 g cream cheese
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
2 dl double cream
42 Marie biscuits
3 dl blueberry soup or milk

Method

1. Wash the lemon, zest it and set aside, then cut the lemon in half.
2. Place the bilberries in a deep saucepan together with 50 g of the sugar and the juice from half of the lemon.
3. Bring the bilberries to a simmer on medium-low and stir occasionally. Simmer for about 10 minutes until it thickens and looks like jam.
4. Set aside to cool down - speed up by placing in cold water in the sink.
5. Transfer to a deep container and blend until smooth. Be very careful of splatter because it will be difficult to remove.
6. Place the cream cheese in a deep bowl, add the remaining sugar, the vanilla sugar and the juice from the second half of the lemon. Stir thoroughly to combine.
7. Add the smooth bilberries and stir through well.
8. Whip the double cream to stiff peaks – this doesn't take long and watch out so it doesn't turn to butter.
9. Fold in the whipped double cream into the cream cheese mixture.
10. Pour the blueberry soup or milk in a small bowl. Now dip each Marie bisquit into the liquid and place on a cake plate so that there is one in the middle and six around it.
11. Use a spatula or a knife to spread some of the cheesecake filling over the biscuits, taking care to not go outside the outer edge of the flower shape they form. I aimed for about 1 cm thickness.
12. Repeat the proces with the second layer of biscuits – dip in the liquid, then place on top of the cheesecake layer. Then follow with another layer of cheesecake mixture.
13. Do four more layers. Then carefully work around the outer edge and fill in the gaps and smooth out so that the biscuit layers are visible.
14. Place a little of the cheesecake filling in a piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe some rosettes on top. Decorate with fresh or frozen bilberries.
15. Chill in the fridge for a couple of hours, to allow the biscuits to soften a bit so that it's easier to cut the cake.

This turned out quite small because the Marie biscuits I bought were on the smaller side, so the cake would have been enough for 6 people. Lundulph thought that the lemon dominated the overall flavour. I agree, bilberries can easily get lost among other flavours, so I will need to experiment and reduce the lemon juice a bit. As there's a heat wave in the south of the UK at the moment, I had to chill the cheesecake filling for a bit before assimbling the cake, then I had to chill the assembled cake before finishing the edges, and chill a final time before piping decorations on top. But on a regular cooler day it should be possible to do everything in one go.

I had hoped that the cake would be the same lovely purple colour like in the recipe, but no, it went a lot darker. It could be a camera setting on the recipe photo or some sort of post-production treatment. But I wonder if it might be because I used bilberries – these are the European wild variety that my Mum picks every year. They seem to be purple all through, whereas the shop-bought blueberries only seem to have purple skins, so might not result in such a strong colour. I will need to experiment with these as well. It was very tasty – we had a slice on Sunday already when I made it and had the last piece today on my Dad's actual birthday.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Chickpea and cauliflower stew

Since we started using Ocado to deliver our weekly groceries, we've also been getting their magazine, which quite often has a few interesting recipes. Today I tried this one, which turned out to be quite tasty. However, I felt it needed a bit of sprucing up.

Ingredients

150 g sundried tomatoes, chopped
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 onions peeled and diced
4-5 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 tsp smoked paprika (1 mild and 1 spicy if you like)
1 cauliflower divided into bite-sized florets
250 g button mushrooms, sliced
400 ml hot vegetable stock
2 cans of chick peas, 400 g each, use the liquid from one of them
100 ml double cream
1 tbsp lemon juice
20 g basil leaves, sliced

Method

1. Heat the oil in a deep saucepan and fry the onion for 5 minutes until it goes soft and a bit transluscent.
2. Press in the garlic and add the paprika and stir vigorously for a few seconds.
3. Add the cauliflower, tomatoes, mushrooms, chickpeas with some of their liquid and the stock. Let simmer for 15–20 minutes until the cauliflower begins to soften.
4. Remove from the heat and stir in the double cream.
5. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice and stir in the basil.
6. Serve with a wholemeal flatbread.

The original recipe said serves 4, but I'd say this is more like serves 5, though it all depends on the size of the cauliflower of course. It was very tasty and worked very nicely as filling for a pita. Fairly easy to make too, so would work well as a working night dinner. I'm not sure how well it would freeze without the cauliflower going quite mushy, but I don't see a need for freezing with these amounts.

Lingonkola

One of the traditional Swedish Christmas sweets is kola (toffee) and there are loads of variations of it. I've been making it for a few years and always felt I've done something wrong. However, the stuff I've done over the past couple of years has been very tasty and I have decided that the discrepancy between what I imagine and what I end up with is due to the humid climate in the UK.

I've tried several different recipes, but a couple of years ago I made a lingon flavoured kola and it was really nice. So I was very surprised that I'd not recorded it in the blog. This is to correct this omission, because this year they turned out very nice too.

When I searched for the recipe, there were many results which showed beautifully rich pink sweets. I was hoping to get this colour too, unfortunately they went brown and look like generic toffees. Either the sugar caramelised or some of it burnt at the bottom of the saucepan, because it required some elbow grease to remove afterwards. Luckily the flavour was not affected.

The original recipe is in Swedish here.

Ingredients
makes around 70, depending on the size
250 g frozen lingonberries
260 g granulated sugar
100 g unsalted butter
3 dl whipping cream
1.5 dl light syrup
1 tbsp glucose syrup

Method

1. Stir together the frozen lingonberries and the sugar in a large saucepan with a thick bottom and bring to a boil.
2. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh or sieve. This should give around 340 g juice. Save the pulp and skins and use as jam on toast.
3. Melt the butter in the saucepan and add the whipping cream, lingon-sugar mixture, light syrup and glucose syrup and stir gently to mix.
4. Stop stirring once everything is combined and looks homogenous. Then let the mixture simmer gently until it reaches 125 °C.
5. While the toffee mixture is cooking, line a shallow baking tin (25 x 25 cm) with baking paper. 
6. When the mixture reaches the right temperature, pour into the baking tin and allow to cool down completely.
7. Cut up into bite sized pieces and wrap in baking paper, then store in an airtight container.

Needless to say, you need to have good teeth for these. Keep them in room temperature for a softer toffee or in the fridge for a harder, chewier texture.

A couple of years ago I invested in an adjustable "toffee mould" because the mixture does set fairly quickly once it's off the hob. However once it sets, I recommend refrigerating it before cutting because it will behave like a glacier - looks solid, but flows and once the adjustable mould is removed it will start deforming. I ended up cutting a strip, putting the mould sides back on and putting the thing in the fridge, then quickly cutting the strip into pieces, wrapping them in prepared pieces of baking paper, then also back in the fridge.

The lingonberries can probably be replaced with raspberries and I think adding some liquorice powder would be quite nice too. Next Christmas.