Spiced Peach Chutney

Our peach harvest isn’t so prolific this year but I have managed to spare a few, from being guzzled straight down or thrown into a peach cobbler, to make a batch of spicy chutney.

Last year my sister was out visiting from Australia and we made this receipe with nectarines, substituting half of the sugar with our own organic fynbos honey. It has a distinct spiciness with the honey rounding off the flavours. Brilliant with a cheese platter, especially with camenbert.

This year my daughter and I made it, sitting on the stoep, peeling the 4kg peaches chatting about school, baby bunnies and life in general from an 8 year-old’s perspective. She helped me stir, flavour and spice this “girly chutney” and made me promise I would consider calling it the “mom and daughter chutney”.

We again added our own honey so it has that rounded flavour but it seems to be a lot spicier than last year-maybe it has something to do with the mood of the head chef?

Here’s the receipe it is taken out of a South African cook book–The Farm Kitchen

2kgs peaches (stoned and peeled)

2 Granny Smith apples (peeled and chopped)

2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger (peeled and grated)

4 cloves of garlic (peeled and crushed)

2 medium onions (peeled and chopped)

1x410gram chopped tomatoes

600ml wine vinegar

600gram sugar

30ml sea salt

10ml ground cinnamon

15ml grated nutmeg

15ml ground white pepper

Place peaches, apples, ginger, garlic and onions in a food processor, blend. Not too fine. Transfer to a large pot and add remaining ingredients. Bring to he boil, reduce heat to medium and leave to cook for at least an hour—until thick and gooey. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking. Spoon into sterilised bottles and seal.

What to do with lemons

 

Lemonade

Lemon Curd

Limoncello

Pickled Lemons

Lemon juice-frozen

Lemon Meringue Pie

Lemon Sponge Pudding

 

We seem never to be without baskets full of lemons–so any receipes are welcome!!

Green Figs and Ugly Ducklings

The old and the new

Is it a duck?

Well–the 15th of October has passed and everybody knows in this valley that by this time of year one has to have picked the “voor vye” and made your Green Fig Preserve.

The “voor vye” are the first figs on the fig trees that are still unripe and very green. For reasons unknown to this ex-city slicker now is the only time to pick these figs. So up the fig tree I went and stripped it bare of it’s hard, green, very unpalletable figs–stuck them in a basket and was surprised to find I had 8kgs!!!

Now the fun started, each fig had to be scraped with a sharp knife and a small cross cut into he bottom of it (the blossom side).  Needless to say the white sap that oozes out of the cut stem and the green scrapings from the figs chews into your fingers and at 11pm that night I was sitting in the kitchen with a plaster on each finger, a cramp in my thumb from scraping and wondering what on earth  was I doing this for?!  

The next step is to leave them overnight in a bath of water and bicarb to soften.

The next morning you boil them in water for about 15minutes or until you can gently push a matchstick into them (as per the local Afrikaans cookbook) then they are drained while you boil up a syrup of sugar and water, when boiling add the figs and boil until the temperature reaches 5′C above the boiling point of water.

Bottle.

Shew–a definate must for slow food lovers. Many a time through this process I gave myself that “look”-why?  But now I am looking quite smugly at my 30 odd jars of cathederal green jewels, knowing that each fig has been touched, scraped, picked, cut and placed individually by me and they seem pretty special–not to mention that they taste absolutely delicious. 

Served on a cheese board with camenbert or brie, smeared on toast with creme fresh or with marscopone for dessert—yum!      Cramps and sore fingers forgotten.

Two weeks ago we were blessed to have our first geese hatching, after much pecking and hissing and hooting from the protective parents, we managed to see two little golden balls of fluff equipped with beaks and webs.  Two days later there was another golden ball of fluff just a little bit smaller than the others but just as cute.

We noticed that the third one just didn’t seem to want to grow—definately not as steady on it’s webs and definately didn’t stretch it’s neck out like it’s siblings–two weeks on we were a bit concerned and thought it might not survive–then it dawned on us!  It wasn’t a goose—in fact looks suspiciously like our Macou (Muscovey duck)–the same waggle, short neck and fat body—the duck most proberly laid an egg on the goose’s nest!  The ugly duckling was redeemed from being the runt and placed on the podium as first Macou to be born in paradise!